by Gideon Allon and Israel Hayom Staff
New legislation seeks to mandate social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter to monitor, remove posts inciting violence or terrorism or face a hefty fine • Public security minister says new bill imperative, "Facebook has certain responsibilities."
Social media has a
responsibility to fight online incitement to terrorism [Illustrative]
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Photo credit: Reuters  |
A new bill seeking to see social media
platforms take tougher action against online incitement passed its
preliminary Knesset reading Wednesday. Fifty MKs voted in favor of the
legislation proposal, while four MKs opposed it and one MK abstained.
Introduced by Zionist Union MK Revital Swid,
the legislation proposal, dubbed the "Facebook bill,' seeks to mandate
the social media giant to monitor and remove post inciting violence and
terrorism within 48 hours, or be fined 300,000 shekels ($78,000).
"This bill is dedicated to Richard Lakin, who was murdered last October in Jerusalem," Swid said, referring to an Oct. 13 terrorist attack during
which two terrorists boarded a bus traveling between the capital's
Jewish Armon Hanatziv neighborhood and the Arab Jabel Mukaber
neighborhood and opened fire on the passengers. Three people were killed
in the attack, and 10 others were wounded.
"Before the attack, one of the terrorists
posted a call for a 'shahid's death' on his Facebook page and it went
viral. After the deadly attack, posts and videos lauding the attack were
posted on various social media websites and they are still available
today," she said.
"The social media revolution has brought about
a new era. We are in the midst of a lone-wolf wave of terrorism fueled,
among other things, by the incitement to terrorism seen on Facebook.
While it [Facebook] is not responsible for the surge in violence, it
does serve as a convenient platform for those who incite it. Social
media companies have no social interest to prevent incitement to
terrorism -- they will act only if they have a financial interest.
"They [Facebook] monitor and remove, within
seconds, content including pornography or things that constitute
pedophilia. They can do the same for content including incitement to
terrorism," she concluded.
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who
backs the bill, called it "necessary legislation, one can even say it is
imperative. When terrorists are 20 years old and younger, they consume
messages primarily from online platforms that seem to know almost
everything about us." Facebook users, he said, "have made the company
hundreds of millions of dollars, so they [Facebook] have certain
responsibilities."
Erdan urged "all internet companies, which in
some cases are more powerful than countries -- don't wait for
legislation. Your platforms are used to spread incitement that brings
about murder and terrorism. You can't hide from it, not now and not in
the future. It doesn't matter if we're talking about a wave of terrorism
or an intifada. If anything this is a global Facebook intifada, and it
may soon spread to Twitter and YouTube. You must appoint people to
prevent online incitement. Have them here first, so the police have
someone to work with, and they no longer have to wait for your
representatives in Ireland to reply."
He further noted that "it's not just the Israeli
government that's working to prevent incitement to terrorism. More and
more countries understand the danger and the direct connection between
incitement on social media and terrorism. It's not for nothing that
Facebook is facing a $1 billion lawsuit in the U.S. This is just the
beginning -- we're facing wave of lawsuits against Facebook all over the
world, and internet companies would be wise to wake up."
Gideon Allon and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=35107
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