META MAY FLAG MORE SOCIAL POSTS CONTAINING WORD ‘ZIONIST’ AS ANTI-SEMITIC: REPORT

Sat 10 February 2024:

US newspaper The Washington Post says it has seen internal guidance from tech giant Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, that shows a debate is occurring within the company over how to flag user posts containing the word “zionist”.

The Washington Post says the move would be to “counter a surge of anti-Semitism online”, and could set the company up for a clash over censorship, as users continue to post about Israel’s continuing war on Gaza.

The policy as it exists allows “Zionist” to be used in “political discourse but removed when it’s used explicitly as a proxy for Jews or Israelis in a dehumanizing or violent way”, according to an email a Meta representative sent to the organizations inviting them to the Friday meeting. The email further stated the company was considering reviewing it in light of posts users and “stakeholders” have recently reported, the Meta representative wrote. The Intercept first reported the potential change in policy.

To date, the war has killed at least 27,947 Palestinians and wounded 67,459 others.

The social media company has reportedly briefed some advocacy groups, both Jewish and Palestinian, on the possible change, which would expand “how it enforces its ban against hate speech to include more uses of the term, especially when it might appear as a hateful substitute for ‘Jews’ or ‘Israelis,’” the Post says, citing “people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters” at Meta.

Organizations involved in discussions, which include MPower Change, 7amleh and Jewish Voice for Peace, expressed deep concern in the meeting about whether this change would further censor pro-Palestinian voices. Several reports commissioned by 7amleh and Human Rights Watch as well as one commissioned by Meta confirmed that Palestinian accounts have long been systematically silenced and stifled on Meta-owned platforms.

Linda Sarsour, the executive director of Muslim advocacy organization MPower Change, said Meta’s director of content policy stakeholder engagement, Peter Stern, provided few details about why the company was revisiting the policy now and how it would be implemented or enforced in a way that doesn’t stifle political expression. “If you already have a policy that’s addressing Zionism as a proxy, then why are we having this conversation? Why is there further consideration to expand this policy?” Sarsour said.

The groups also questioned how such policies would be enforced, including whether humans or Meta’s algorithms – which have been criticized for unfairly censoring Palestine-related content – would be employed to detect and censor such language.

Yesterday, The Palestinian Digital Rights Coalition, a social media watchdog group, sent letters to Meta, X, Telegram and TikTok drawing attention to the proliferation of dehumanising rhetoric against Palestinians on their platforms amid the war on Gaza.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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