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Jewish, Anti-Hate Groups Express Concern Over Meta’s New Fact-Checking Policy: ‘All of Society Will Suffer’
Meta logo is seen in this illustration taken August 22, 2022. Photo: Reuters
Jewish groups and a slew of other organizations said this week they are extremely worried about how Meta’s new community-driven, fact-checking system will worsen online antisemitism, hate speech, and disinformation, and increase the targeting of Jewish communities and individuals.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that starting in the United States, the social media giant is ending its third-party fact-checking program and replacing it with a Community Notes model, like the one on Wikipedia and Elon Musk’s X. Zuckerberg said Meta —which owns Facebook, Instagram, and Threads — made the move in an effort to enhance free expression on its platforms.
“We will allow more speech by lifting restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discourse and focusing our enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations” Meta announced. “We’ve seen this approach work on X — where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see. We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they’re seeing — and one that’s less prone to bias.”
Meta added that besides “high-severity violations” — such as terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud, and scams — it will not take action to enforce its policies unless someone reports an issue, to avoid “too much content being censored that shouldn’t have been.” Meta will also be “getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity, and gender.”
Hate speech and antisemitism will no longer be automatically flagged by Meta, and the company will not proactively remove such content unless a user reports the issue. However, even after receiving a report, there is no guarantee that Meta will delete the harmful content or that the report will be reviewed.
Yfat Barak-Cheney, executive director of the World Jewish Congress Technology and Human Rights Institute (TecHRI), said Meta’s new community notes system for fact-checking “must be approached with great caution.”
“Platforms like X and Wikipedia, which employ similar user-driven concepts, have demonstrated how easily misinformation and disinformation can be manipulated, and putting the onus on the vulnerable communities to report and correct information online,” she noted in a statement. “In an online environment already marked by hostility, we are deeply concerned that the reduction of protections and clear guidelines will open the floodgates to content that fuels real-world threats, including violent acts targeting Jewish communities and individuals.”
“Meta has made important strides in recent years to make its platforms safer, and it is critical that this work continues,” she added. “Rolling back these efforts risks undoing hard-won progress at a time when vigilance against online hate and antisemitism is needed more than ever.”
“It is mind blowing how one of the most profitable companies in the world, operating with such sophisticated technology, is taking significant steps back in terms of addressing antisemitism, hate, misinformation, and protecting vulnerable & marginalized groups online,” said ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt. “The only winner here is Meta’s bottom line and as a result, all of society will suffer.”
“Meta must significantly reform their average user reporting process unless they intend to completely abdicate their responsibility to address antisemitism and hate at a time when it is surging online and offline,” the ADL Center for Technology and Society added. “If all of this is the direction Meta is heading in 2025, it is a bad sign of what is to come for Jews and all marginalized people on their platforms.”
Others outside of the Jewish community also expressed concern about the changes that Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday.
Cyberwell, a nonprofit organization that tackles online antisemitism, said in a released statement on X that the new Meta Community Notes system is “a systematic lowering of the bar on how Meta intends to enforce their Community Standards against hate speech and harassment online.” It also criticized Meta for now giving itself “less accountability” for hate speech that can now spread easier on its platforms. It said the move will result in “more hate speech, more politicized content, more silos, and less effective responses from the platforms.”
“Given the mounting evidence of how hate speech, incendiary content, and harassment lead to real-world harm including hate crimes, terror attacks, and child suicide, CyberWell is deeply concerned at the purposeful deterioration of Trust & Safety best practices at Meta,” the organization said. “For the Jewish community this announcement means that Meta is making it easier for antisemitism to flourish online. It will likely lead to an uptick in hate-posting, harassment, and even a migration of white supremacists and extreme racists onto Meta’s platforms, much like the period immediately following the Twitter acquisition.”
“This is not a victory for free speech — it’s an exchange of human bias in a small, contained group of fact-checkers for human bias at scale through Community Notes,” CyberWell added. “The only way to prevent censorship and data manipulation by any government or corporation would be to institute legal requirements and reforms on Big Tech that enforce social media reform and transparency requirements.”
“The new era for Meta is one in which it has decided to let liars, snake oil salesman, fraudsters, hate actors, propagandists for autocrats like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Ayatollah Khamenei unleash a tidal wide of disinformation many times the size of anything we’ve seen to date,” he added. “This is going to increase the spread and visibility of unchallenged lies, it’s going to worsen the spread of hate. It’s going to create more risk to our communities, our democracy, public health, and to our kids.”
Rose Burley, co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit organization the Center for Information Resilience, said the change will “undoubtedly” result in much more disinformation spreading on Meta’s platforms. “Meta, by doing this, are retreating from fact, they are retreating from truth,” he argued. “And by switching to a Community Notes model, they are effectively trying to capture a tidal wave in a bucket, and it’s not going to work … By getting rid of the fact-checkers, what you’re doing is taking away a safeguarding and you’re sending a message to users and to the wider community that truth and facts just don’t really matter anymore.”
The post Jewish, Anti-Hate Groups Express Concern Over Meta’s New Fact-Checking Policy: ‘All of Society Will Suffer’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Free Palestine’ Activist in Arizona Wearing ‘Israel Kills Children’ T-Shirt Gets Arrested After Refusing to Leave Gym
A pro-Palestinian activist who was kicked out of a gym in Gilbert, Arizona, and arrested after he wore a shirt that read “Israel Kills Children.” Photo: Screenshot
A pro-Palestinian activist wearing an offensive T-shirt critical of Israel was kicked out of a gym in Gilbert, Arizona, and arrested this week after he ignored requests by gym management to leave the premises.
The man, who goes by the social media handle Resistance is Beautiful, posted videos of the incident on Wednesday on Instagram. It began when he was exercising at a Life Time gym in Gilbert while wearing a black short-sleeve T-shirt that said “Israel Kills Children.” He said that when he arrived at the gym and was checked in, a gym employee told him that he needed to take off the shirt, whose message was an apparent commentary on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war falsely accusing the Jewish state of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. He refused to take off the shirt.
Shortly afterward, the gym’s manager approached the activist and told him that he must leave the premises for not having “an active membership, or the gym would call the police. When the activist refused to leave the facility, police were called to escort him out of the building.
“You don’t have an active membership so I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the gym’s manager, Mike Esposito, said to the anti-Israel activist in a video shared on Instagram.
“I just paid for my membership, what do you mean?” the activist replied. “I pay for my membership … I’ve been a member here for three years. Payment goes through every month.”
“Someone from corporate … the cops are on their way,” Esposito said. “Your membership is not active so we called the police because you’re trespassing here in the club.”
The activist then asked Esposito, “Is the problem the shirt? Or is it the skin color?” He also told the manager: “You know where there are no more gyms left? In Palestine. Because you guys bombed it all. Are you offended by the shirt or the fact that you guys kill all the Palestinians in the gyms over there [in Gaza]. Is the problem the shirt?”
Esposito, who is reportedly not Jewish or Israeli but of Italian descent, ignored the man’s questions about the T-shirt and his remarks about Palestinians. Instead, the manager repeatedly said that the activist does not have an active membership at the facility. “You just don’t have an active membership, so right now you’re trespassing because you’re in the club without an active membership,” he said. “We have to ask you to leave.”
Two Gilbert police officers arrived not long afterward and arrested the anti-Israel activist for trespassing. Before they escorted him out of the gym, he told police, “There’s a Holocaust going on in Palestine … there are no more gyms left in Palestine, you guys bombed all of them. Free Palestine.” He also shared that he wore the “Israel Kills Children” T-shirt previously at the gym, and staff members told him in the past that it was offensive. “They’ve always said, ‘Oh that shirt is offensive.’ You know, typical Gilbert white supremacy stuff,” he said.
The founder, CEO, chairman, and president of Life Time is Bahram Akradi, who was born in Tehran, Iran, and emigrated to the US months before the 1979 Iranian revolution. He founded the chain of gyms in 1992.
The activist was released from the Gilbert police station shortly after the incident at the gym. “There is no greater honor in the world than to sit in a jail cell for Palestine,” he said in an Instagram video posted on Wednesday after his release. “And we’ll do it over and over and over again until we break this enemy and we get Palestine back. That’s my word.”
The man has shared other photos and videos on social media of him clashing with police officers in Gilbert, trespassing while carrying a Palestinian flag and getting arrested for his anti-Israel activism. He also shared clips of himself wearing other anti-Israel shirts, including one that read “Israel is a terrorist project, Free Palestine,” and another that said, “Israel KILLS and America covers it up.”
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Gal Gadot Addresses Controversy Over Not Wearing Hostage Pin to the Golden Globes
Gal Gadot at the 82nd Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025. Photo: Dan MacMedan-USA TODAY via Reuters Connect
Israeli actress Gal Gadot took to social media on Wednesday to explain why she did not wear to the 82nd Golden Globes this past weekend a pin in solidarity with the 100 hostages still held by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip for more than 450 days.
In a message shared on her Instagram Story, the “Wonder Woman” star, 39, started by clarifying that contrary to Israeli media reports, she was “never forbidden” by Golden Globes organizers from wearing to the award ceremony on Sunday night in Beverly Hills a pin that featured a yellow ribbon, which is a symbol that calls for the return of hostages abducted by Hamas terrorists from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Some people chose to tell a story that never happened, and I prefer to focus on what’s real and truly important — our hostages,” she wrote. She then detailed her conscious decision not to wear a pin with a yellow ribbon to the Golden Globes — a move for which she was widely criticized by many pro-Israel supporters on social media. The “Red Notice” star explained that she instead chose to show solidarity with the hostages by wearing a yellow sapphire ring to the award show, where she was a presenter.
“Everyone expresses their support in a way that suits them. I chose to share a post with global reach and wear a yellow ring as a symbol of solidarity,” she wrote in the Instagram Story. “What truly matters is that the hostages come home now. My heart is with the families waiting for them. May we experience quieter and safer days.”
The message on her Instagram Story was written in both English and Hebrew, and was accompanied by an image of a yellow ribbon.
Before the Golden Globes took place on Sunday night, Gadot uploaded a post on Instagram that featured a statement and photos about the remaining 100 hostages with a focus on 20-year-old Israeli hostage Liri Albag, who was featured in a video that Hamas released on Saturday. Albag was taken hostage along with six other female soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces at the Nahal Oz army base on the Israel-Gaza border during the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack in southern Israel in October 2023. The five women are still held hostage by Hamas.
Gadot wrote in her Instagram post on Sunday afternoon that while she prepared to attend the Golden Globes, “my heart is heavy, and my soul aches knowing the hostages are still there [in Gaza].” She added: “Every day that passes without an agreement puts their lives in greater danger. I can’t stop thinking about the families, waiting for them, counting the hours, the minutes, clinging to hope. They must come home. We all deserve to see them return, alive. Bring them home now.”
Gadot presented at the 82nd Golden Globes wearing a custom black silk Giorgio Armani Privé long sleeve gown that she styled with Tiffany & Co. jewelry and a yellow sapphire ring.
A screenshot of Gal Gadot’s Instagram Story.
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Polish President Wants Netanyahu to Be Able to Go to Auschwitz Anniversary Despite ICC Arrest Warrant: Aide
People with Israeli flags attend the International March of the Living at the former Auschwitz Nazi German death camp, in Brzezinka near Oswiecim, Poland, May 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Poland’s president asked the government to ensure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can choose to attend the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp without fear of arrest under an ICC warrant, a senior aide said on Thursday.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in November for Netanyahu and his ex-defense minister, as well as a Hamas leader, Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group.
Israel has condemned the warrants for Netanyahu and former defense chief Yoav Gallant, saying that it has acted in self-defense in its air and ground war in Gaza triggered by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that President Andrzej Duda had written Prime Minister Donald Tusk saying Poland should ensure Netanyahu can be “unhindered” in attending the Jan. 27 Auschwitz commemoration given the event’s exceptional nature.
Malgorzata Paprocka, the head of Duda’s office, confirmed to state news agency PAP on Thursday that such a letter had been sent.
“In the opinion of the president, there is one issue — precisely because it is the Auschwitz camp, every person from Israel, every representative of the authorities of this country should have the opportunity to take part in this exceptional event.”
She said Duda was waiting for a response. Tusk’s office did not reply to an emailed request for comment.
Duda is a right-wing nationalist who has had tense relations with Tusk’s centrist, pro-European government since it took office in December 2023.
Asked by state-run news channel TVP Info whether Netanyahu could count on a guarantee from Poland that he would not be arrested, Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said: “There is no such topic, because Mr. Netanyahu is not coming to Europe.”
Meanwhile, the Polish Foreign Ministry denied reports on Thursday that the country had threatened to arrest Netanyahu should he choose to attend the Jan. 27 ceremony marking 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz.
“We are aware that this fake news is being spread in the US media, as if Polish Secretary of State Władysław T. Bartoszewski had stated that Prime Minister Netanyahu would be arrested upon his arrival in Poland, based on a ruling by the International Criminal Court,” the Foreign Ministry told JNS in a statement.
“Such a statement has never been made,” the ministry added. “Poland is a safe country and any leader visiting Poland is entitled to protection granted by the Ministry of the Interior.”
A spokesperson for Netanyahu declined to comment. Netanyahu has not said whether he would attend the Auschwitz commemoration. He has attended previous anniversary events at Auschwitz.
Over 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, perished in gas chambers or from starvation, cold, and disease at Auschwitz, which Nazi Germany set up in occupied Poland during World War Two.
More than three million of Poland’s 3.2 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, accounting for about half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust.
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