Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube fail to act upon the majority of reported antisemitic posts, according to a study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
The CCDH reported and tracked 714 posts with terms or hashtags associated with antisemitic content. According to the study, the social media platforms failed to act on 84% of the antisemitic posts.CCDH is an American/British nonprofit that “seeks to disrupt the architecture of online hate and misinformation,” according to their introduction to the study.
Posts from the study’s samples were viewed over 7.3 million times, according to the CCDH. Out of the 714 posts flagged, only 114 were acted upon by the social media sites.
Many of the reported posts contained tropes about “Jewish Puppeteers,” a “Jew World Order,” Jewish involvement in 9/11, Jewish involvement in COVID-19, and various conspiracy theories about the Rothschild family and George Soros. Others included Holocaust denial, Nazi symbolism, violence towards Jews, racist caricatures of Jews, and “Blood Libel.”
Instagram, TikTok and Twitter do not ban antisemitic hashtags such as #synagogueofsatan, #zionistcontrol, #namethejew, #holohoax, and #killthejews. Various YouTube videos about antisemitic conspiracies have tens of thousands of views.
The worst offender, according to the CCDH, is Facebook. Facebook moderators reacted to less than 11% of reported posts, despite Facebook’s updated hate speech policy to ban Holocaust-denial content.
According to the American Jewish Committee’s 2020 survey of American Jews, “The State of Antisemitism in America 2020,” 22% of those surveyed had been the target of an antisemitic remark online or through social media over the past five years – 2% higher than the same study in 2019. Most of those who had been targeted on social media had been targeted on Facebook (62%), followed by Twitter (33%), Instagram (12%) and YouTube (10%). Of those who reported the incident to the social media company, only 53% received responses to the reports.
On August 17, the Jewish Community Relations Bureau|American Jewish Committee hosted “Prepare to Respond: Antisemitism in schools and on social media.” During the event, examples were shown of examples of antisemitic social media posts about COVID-19, Jewish control and manipulation for financial gain, comparing Zionists to Nazis, praising Hitler and delegitimizing Israel.
During the program, Sarah Markowitz, JCRB|AJC Assistant Director, Education and Programs, suggested screenshotting digital evidence and reporting it on social media. “It’s really important to document and screenshot what you see because those posts can easily disappear or get deleted,” she said. “If [students are] going to report [the posts] to your school, or to JCRB|AJC, it’s really important to have that evidence.” In addition to screenshotting, she said, people can report directly to social media platforms.
“Teenagers probably have the most exposure to antisemitic, anti-Israel social media posts,” Markowitz said. “However, they might not be able to clearly identify what exactly is inaccurate or antisemitic in the posts they see.
