Facebook has reportedly experienced nearly a 200 percent increase in antisemitic posts since the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas against Israel, and a U.S. Senator recently wrote to the social media platform’s parent company, Meta, about reports it is censoring pro-Israel content.
Antisemitism monitoring technology company Cyberwell recently warned of a dramatic increase in antisemitic posts and posts that call for violence against Jewish people across all social media websites, claiming social media companies were unprepared to confront “national security issues” posed by the Hamas attacks.
In a recent interview with LiveNow from Fox, Cyberwell CEO Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor revealed that Facebook is among the worst hit by the purported rise in antisemitism.
Montemayor said Facebook has seen a 193 percent increase in antisemitism. By comparison, Montemayor said that X, formerly Twitter, saw only an 86 percent increase in antisemitic posts.
WATCH – Which social media platform has the highest levels of antisemitism?
Our founder and CEO, Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, breaks it down here: pic.twitter.com/dyj9hJTYz7
— CyberWell (@CyberWell_org) December 21, 2023
While the platform is reportedly seeing a rise in antisemitic content, U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) questioned Meta executives Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri in a December 18 letter about measures it reported taking to limit “potentially unwelcome or unwanted comments” following the October 7 attacks against Israel.
Following those algorithmic changes, Blackburn revealed “multiple Tennesseans have expressed” to her office “that Meta is censoring their entirely unobjectionable content, which happens to be pro-Israeli.”
Blackburn told the company she is “concerned” its “content moderation policies are not being applied consistently and that, as a result, the company is making it harder to post pro-Israel content on its platforms” due to its content moderation.
The senator asked Meta to clearly state its rules for content related to the conflict in Israel with “references to the specific policies that can be found in your terms of service or elsewhere,” and asked for the company to provide “a breakdown of the number of account suspensions, removals, and content takedowns” sorted by type of policy violation found, and determine if any users were “suspended, removed, or had content removed for antisemitic content.”
Blackburn also asked Meta to clarify whether it has been “contacted by any government regarding its use of algorithms or content moderation tools” in relation to the conflict in Israel, and to state whether it complied with any censorship requests on behalf of a government.
Last month a former Facebook employee, who started at the company in 2009, told the senator’s office there is “irrefutable evidence” that Facebook knowingly serves harmful content to children, including posts that glorify drug use and eating disorders, and hid the data holding the evidence from Congress.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Georgia Star News, The Virginia Star, and the Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
