Mark Zuckerberg’s platforms will remove posts denouncing Israel’s crimes as anti-Semitic content.
By Marcel Wando
On July 9, 2024, Meta Group announced on its transparency blog that it will update its content censorship policies to include the term “Zionism” when used in certain contexts. According to the platform, this word is used in multiple senses, some of which they consider “legitimate,” such as the political movement or the State of Israel – equating critics and supporters – and others “illegitimate,” when referring to the Jewish people as a whole.
The alleged aim would be to stop dehumanizing comparisons, calls for violence or denial of the Jewish people’s right to exist. Meta’s statement even specifies some scenarios in which these instances are often applied, such as in comparisons to rats, pigs, and worms, or accusations that they control the media or the world. An anti-Semitic discourse that has been around for a long time and has been growing with the rise of extreme right-wing parties around the world. It is therefore an attempt to gain the support of the Jewish community and certain left-wing organizations and activists.
However, if this were the case, then it is contradictory that Meta allows so much far-right content, including sponsored content. It is also contradictory that this is only being implemented now, as these organizations have been growing worldwide for more than a decade, driven by Meta-controlled social networks. Political lobbying for unrestricted freedom of speech by the far right is convenient for the platform, which benefits from the absence of regulations. These political and economic interests demonstrate a contradiction between the current discourse and the historical practice of this company.
In order to appear impartial, the statement indicates that it consulted 145 stakeholders, including representatives of civil society and academics, such as political scientists, historians, lawyers, civil and digital rights groups, free speech lobbyists and human rights specialists from the Middle East, Africa, Israel, North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia. In addition, it also has an Independent Oversight Board. Finally, they said that, in addition to these consultations, they also conducted academic literature reviews and qualitative research with users and on the platform to seek to understand what the population understands by the term “Zionism”. However, they do not report who the people involved are, what that advice is or the outcome of these investigations. Nor do they say what role this will play in the development of the new policy or what role they will have in its implementation.
But if, on the one hand, the argument that this policy serves to protect the Jewish people is rather fragile, on the other hand, it may threaten activists of the Palestinian cause. The first indication of this is that the communiqué acknowledges that the term “Zionist” is used to refer to the Israeli government and its supporters, which has intensified since what they called “the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza and the West Bank.” When they opt for a generic term like “actions” and not “genocide”, “massacre”, ethnic cleansing”, they do so because they want to pass a message of neutrality. But neutrality in the face of the Zionist butchery in Palestine is to take the side of the oppressor.
Moreover, at three points they suggest that the term Zionist can be used to refer to denying the existence of Jews or Israelis. This approach generates a very common double meaning in Zionist rhetoric. Who would be advocating that the Jewish people cease to exist? Could a slogan of “One Palestine” or “Palestine free from the river to the sea” fit this criterion? Because it is quite common to hear in response to that that this would mean a hypothetical ethnic cleansing of Jews from Palestine, which is not true. Anyone who wants to live in peace with the Palestinians will be able to inhabit Palestine, just as they did before the creation of Israel.
Coincidentally, this announcement is made in the same week that allegations of Israel’s use of the Hannibal protocol are on the rise. In other words, for months the international media and Zionists used the death of settlers and soldiers on October 7 as justification for calling Palestinians terrorists.
They used it to make dehumanizing comparisons, call for violence against refugees and deny the right of the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim people to exist, both in Palestine and in the countries where they are refugees. At no time was this of concern to Meta. Now that it has been proven that these deaths were perpetrated by Israel and not by the resistance, the company says it is very concerned about hate speech.
This change in policy could censor those who speak out against Israel’s crimes, whether by the armed forces or settlers. The note itself admits at the end that changes to its policies depend on both technology and humans reviewing the content, and that lack of context and nuance can lead to delays and inaccurate responses. In other words, it is possible for far-right speech that is actually anti-Semitic to remain available for days before being removed, but for content critical of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians to be removed in a matter of minutes. This risk is evident when they say that content critical of Zionism that is not explicitly directed at the Zionist movement will be removed. In other words, in the absence of context or nuance, it is better to censor.
The text flirts with the false equivalence between Zionism and anti-Semitism and, in practice, threatens the freedom of expression of all those who fight against colonial oppression in Palestine. The control of social networks by multi-billion dollar companies from imperialist countries shows once again their harmful role for humanity and the link between U.S. capital and the Zionist colonial project.
