Tuesday, August 3, 2021

Watchdog blasts social media giants for failing to act on reported antisemitism - i24NEWS and ILH Staff

 

​ by i24NEWS and ILH Staff

Center for Countering Digital Hate flagged hundreds of problematic posts, less than one-sixth of accounts deleted.

A recently released report has found that social media platforms have failed to act on antisemitism on their sites, despite users flagging it.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate, a UK and US nonprofit organization, has recorded hundreds of anti-Jewish sentiments on the main social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter – over a six-week period earlier this year, shortly after the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. It found that in the vast majority of incidents - 84% - nothing was done about it.

Imran Ahmed, CEO of the CCDH raised the alarm that neither automation nor algorithms were being discussed and that even when human moderators were notified, the world's largest and most influential social media companies did barely anything to check it.

"No one has a fundamental right to have an account on a social media platform to bully Jews or to spread hatred that we know can end in serious offline harm," he said in a statement.

The more than 700 posts in question created millions of impressions across the platforms, with only YouTube managing to deal with more than 20% of the complaints. Facebook acted on just 14 of the 129 reports or 10.9%; Twitter took action on 15 out of 137 (11%); TikTok took action against 22 out of 119 (18.5% ) and Instagram acted against 52 out of 277 incidents or 18.8%.

The social media platforms failed to act against most of the familiar antisemitic tropes, such as Holocaust denials, blood libels, and racist caricatures.

i24NEWS contributed to this report.

 

i24NEWS and ILH Staff 

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/08/03/watchdog-blasts-social-media-giants-for-failing-to-act-on-reported-antisemitism/

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