Online antisemitism surged after a terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel, leading to a significant increase in antisemitic content on social media platforms such as Facebook and TikTok.
The surge in hate speech and graphic violence caught these platforms off guard, and the psychological warfare is ongoing.
The rise in antisemitic incidents poses a risk to Western democracies, and companies are advised to proactively increase content moderation during crises. (Trending: Greta Thunberg Caught on Video Going Full Anti-Semite)
Arabic content calling for physical harm or killing of Jews went unchecked due to a lack of moderators, and social media platforms have been criticized for their content moderation efforts.
“Oct. 7 was the largest hijacking of social media platforms by a terrorist organization,” said Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, the founder of CyberWell.
The “horrible, vicious antisemitic terror attack … acted as a catalyst for an outpouring of Jew hatred across the world,” she added.
“The psychological warfare with social media is still happening today,” Montemayor added, as Hamas is “releasing footage of hostages making statements under duress and then showing their bodies or even torture videos.”
“Whenever there’s been conflict in the Middle East, we’ve seen an increase in both antisemitic speech and counter speech,” said Adrian Moore, vice president of policy at Reason Foundation.
“What these companies do have is an obligation to provide a place where people want to be,” he said.
“So I think the best defense we have against offensive online speech is a combination of these companies wanting to provide a decent place for people to exchange ideas and information.”
“You’re seeing the intersection of antisemitism and radical ideology, radical Islamic ideology and pro-terror content online that absolutely poses a risk to any Western democracy, including the United States of America,” Montemayor said.
“We advise that companies should proactively create guidelines for better-resourced and more intensive content moderation during crises, including increasing the number of moderators and experts with cultural and subject matter expertise related to the crisis at hand,” ADL spokesperson Kevin Altman said.
“We just saw an inability to effectively deal with this outpouring of hate speech and pro-terror content in Arabic specifically,” Montemayor pressed.
Despite this, CyberWell has seen a high removal rate for flagged content on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
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