Interestingly if you read the actual report from HRW, it sounds like most of the material they are referring too was legitimately taken down because it supported violence, according to Meta's policies.
For example, the phrase "from the river to the see" is considered hateful by many, so it was taken down. In other cases the content praised attacks by Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the US government.
From HRWs descriptions it sounds like the bulk of the "1049" content removals were clear violations of Meta's policies against support for violence.
Regardless of whether you agree, these don't seem surprising to me on light of Meta's own rules. There are of course a small number of exceptions listed.
"Supported violence" is a wild thing to ... // Compare; at some point, I began to receive an almost unrelenting stream of advertisements for weapons, body armor, etc. Tanks, even. Crazy things. SO much violence is advertised on "Meta"; it's only... """ a specific kind of violence """ that seems to be prohibited, by Meta, namely anti-Israeli violence.
Well no, the rule is just not what you think it is. Meta doesn't ban supporting tools that can be used for violence, Meta bans support for violent acts.
Looking at the actual report, I really disagree with your assessment. It sounds like there's a bunch of nonsense in there where Meta is _not_ living up to its own policies, and is flagging stuff disingenuously.
> Human Rights Watch also found repeated inaccurate application of the “adult nudity and sexual activity” policy for content related to Palestine. In every one of the cases, we reviewed where this policy was invoked, the content included images of dead Palestinians over ruins in Gaza that were clothed, not naked. For example, multiple users reported their Instagram stories being removed under this policy when they posted the same image of a Palestinian father in Gaza who was killed while he was holding his clothed daughter, who was also killed.
... so no nudity, no sexual activity
> For example, a Facebook user post that said, “How can anyone justify supporting the killing of babies and innocent civilians…” was removed under Community Standards on “bullying and harassment.” Another user posted an image on Instagram of a dead child in a hospital in Gaza with the comment, “Israel bombs the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City killing over 500…” which was removed under Community Guidelines on “violence and incitement.”
... arguing _against_ violence is flagged as harassment. Image and statement about Israeli action flagged as incitement
> In one case, an Instagram user received a warning that the comment she posted “may be hurtful to others.” The comment, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, consisted of nothing more than a series of Palestinian flag emojis.[77] In other cases, Meta hid the Palestinian flag from comment sections or removed it on the basis that it “harasses, targets, or shames others.”[78]
...that's just kinda indefensible.
> Many users reported posts on Instagram being removed when they criticized the Israeli government, including the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no matter how nuanced or careful their posts were. Meta removed these posts under its “Dangerous Organizations or Individuals” and hate speech rules, respectively.
... which is crazy since there have been plenty of reasons to criticize Netanyahu well before the Oct 7 attacks.
On the topic of "From the river to the sea", they specifically mention that posts with this phrase, as well as others
> such as “Free Palestine,” “Ceasefire Now,” and “Stop the Genocide,” were repeatedly removed by Instagram and Facebook under “spam” Community Guidelines or Standards without appearing to take into account the context of these comments.
I.e. Meta's own cited policy was not that it "is considered hateful" as you say, but that this political expression was labeled as spam. That sounds pretty bogus.
If someone actually praising the Oct 7 attacks or something gets flagged/banned/etc, then sure, Meta is just applying its policies. That does not seem to be what's happening here. It's true that the report doesn't give numbers for these specific treatments, and the authors have a limited and biased view based on who responded to their call for evidence. But the limited view doesn't seem to be of Meta even-handedly and competently applying their policies.
_However_, I don't want to attribute everything to malice where incompetence may be at least a partial explanation. If motivated 3rd parties are repeatedly flagging a photo of a clothed, dead Palestinian as "nudity", and Meta's systems are built with the assumption that such user-provided flags are presumed trustworthy, then we could easily see how someone posting that photo would get incorrectly/inappropriately flagged.
> Meta's own cited policy was not that it "is considered hateful" as you say, but that this political expression was labeled as spam. That sounds pretty bogus.
Am one of those ? I always mark these as spam as I try to keep my account politics free. I have some friends that are obsessed with the Palestinian cause and there was a time this stuff would constantly appear in my feed.
I think without actual access to the material it's pretty hard to say. For example, the report highlights that someone commented with nothing but a series of Palestinian flags to someone's post, and their comment was flagged and removed. However, they don't share what the original post was; responding with a series of Palestinian flags to an Israeli hostage relative's post about their kidnapped sibling, for example, would be clear harassment and abuse. (And these kinds of abusive comments are extremely common.)
The report also has some pretty strange language, like mentioning that a post which was flagged for nudity contained a picture of a dead woman, and a fully-clothed man holding her body. But... There are so, so many pictures of fully-clothed, male members of Hamas holding nude or partially-nude dead women they abducted and/or raped before murdering. Why does the report only say that the man was fully clothed? Maybe it's just a grammatical error, but they're really light on the details, and releasing the underlying data would answer a lot of questions.
Personally I am suspicious of HRW's report, since they've been caught releasing misleading reports in the past, and the director of HRW's Israel/Palestine division is a BDS activist [1]. Obviously your viewpoint may be different, but without access to the underlying information it's pretty hard to make a compelling case to either side... Which to me points to the report being more worthy of suspicion, since if it was clear-cut, they'd easily convince more people of their correctness by releasing the data.
Seems you haven't read the actual report, HRW clearly points inconsistencies in the application of Meta's policies that amounts to censorship of any support to Palestine.
I've seen reports of hate speech in Hebrew getting a pass while Arabic users are having rules enforced in an overly broad way. Regardless of your views on the conflict, it is a bit chilling that a massive corporation is now the arbiter of speech for much of the internet now.
The irony of banning the phrase, "From the river to the sea" is that in almost every Israeli school, there are maps on the wall that show Israel extending from the river to the sea.[0]
Greater Israel, extending from the river to the sea, with the Palestinians as stateless people with no rights, is a de facto reality, and has been for 56 years now.
0. This is a typical map. The only indication that there is any Palestinian territory at all is that the tiny "Area A" regions are in a different color. East Jerusalem and the vast majority of the West Bank are simply shown as belonging to Israel. https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-9fb3beb756529713386cc...
> Greater Israel, extending from the river to the sea, with the Palestinians as stateless people with no rights, is a de facto reality, and has been for 56 years now.
"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes" in a nutshell
>The irony of banning the phrase, "From the river to the sea" …
The irony is to talk about the irony without realising the extreme nature of the phrase “From the river to the sea…” for any of the sides. Someone can as easily adapt the same phrase for calls to remove non-jewish population from the land yet the commentator felt the urge to see the irony in “banning the phrase” (as he put it) without thinking through the outcome of using such phrase in all of it’s dangerous aspects.
>every Israeli school, there are maps on the wall that show Israel extending from the river to the sea.[0]
The linked map is from post on quora [1] which does not state that.
To the question : “What borders does Israel show in maps in school textbooks?”
It states the following:
“ It really depends on the age.
TLDR - the books mostly show area international borders with markings for area A, But don’t shy away from the existence of the P.A. In higher grades, they show the evolution of the borders, and the idea that nothing is really fixed or “promised”.
Long answer:
I’ve made a small check on books available on my Child’s elementary school online website. …”
Notice “ elementary school online website.” while commentator states: “ in almost every Israeli school, there are maps on the wall”
Even this one post from only one school speaks about variety of maps presented to children but commentator simply ignores that.
Commentator takes 1 of 10 maps posted there. The one for the smallest age and claims “This is a typical map”
The real irony though is vivid if one looks at the official logo of PLO here [2] who’s chairman is Mahmoud Abbas.
It shows the whole map “from the river to the sea” without any marking for Israel. Commentator criticises Israeli maps for only :“ "Area A" regions are in a different color.” and forgot to mention that PLO does not have any color for Israel in fact. The logo is currently on the official PLO web site.
> Palestinians as stateless people with no rights, is a de facto reality, and has been for 56 years now.
The third irony is mentioning “56 years” and forgetting to mention that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 [2] pretty much to the border before 1967.
yes the problem is most likely that a lot of people have become hamas's defenders recently for some uncomprehensible reasons. Like finding them justifications, or supporting them on the ongoing war. It's pretty insane if you think about.
I remember some people in the arab world took side for ben laden on 9/11 but this time it's happening in the west too.
I recall PLENTY of "The west deserved 9/11 due to imperialism" sentiments, although not people who actually supported Osama Bin Laden.
I see similar sentiments around this war all the time, "Israel deserved this terrorist attack due to imperialism" but again really not much actual support for Hamas.
> yes the problem is most likely that a lot of people have become hamas's defenders recently for some incomprehensible reasons.
when the "good guys" indiscriminately kill over 15000 children in the span of two months, I dunno what you expect but its certainly not "uncomprehensible"
The interesting thing is that the explanation largely preceded these events, he and Greg Lukianoff documented this in their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind.
removal of content is really like 10% of the cases. the most worrisome type of suppression of speech is what they call "shadow banning" which is really "reach limiting". to the extent people now refrain from using the word "Palestine" to avoid metas algirithms. I experienced this myself. We have a draft law in parliament concerning boyocott of israel. I posted a status about the law (notice it's unrelated to war or anything in the news rights now) and it got almost zero reach. it's not subtil. It's like two orders of magnitude less reach. I know it because I'm a political activist and I always comment on draft
laws.
> people now refrain from using the word "Palestine" to avoid metas algirithms
It wasn't algorithm, or glitch, or bug. It was a decision made by humans, including you know who. It's a form of crowd control. That's why it's important to have several channels for 'producers'. For others it's a good idea to have several sources. You'll see much more even if each source represents a single side (which is usually the case, 'democracies' are no different).
From my first hand experience designing these algorithms at Meta and running experiments, and listening to feedback from accounts, I would guess that you are not getting reach because your followers do not interact with what you post. In almost every case people call "shadow ban", the cause was occasionally an actual bug (code doing something undesired and unexpected) or far more often people posting bad content.
The ML is good enough to know whether your followers want to engage with political content. If they don't, Facebook will show them less of it.
I posted 2 things recently. One was link to a game, another to an anime (neither related in any way shape or form to wars nor any news or politics what-so-ever. I got zero responses, not even likes/hearts/laughs. So I assumed FB decided not to show them to any of my friends. "Zero reach".
How do you know the reason for your reason for zero reach is any different than mine? I assumed Meta's algo decided none of my friends would be interested in what I posted, not that I was being censored.
They did respond to my next 2 posts so no idea the difference.
I wonder if the word Palestine (and potentially also Israel) trips some ML systems up. I put "Palestinian values" into a random sentiment analysis tool and it's ranked lower than most other countries. They'd both be (understandably) linked to negative content.
>I've seen comments saying "yes please, show me more bombings, I love to see them die" not taken down, because "them" was palestinians.*
Do you have any proof of this whatsoever? First that these posts actually exist (this I believe) and that the reason they weren't taken down was because they were about Palestinians (versus, say, overlooked so far)?
Doesn’t Facebook have a report button? I’m pretty sure comments like that would be taken down if you reported them, it’s really a no brainer whatever “them” refers to.
I don't remember a single instance of a mass protest on campus or in the streets, in US or in Europe or in Israel, where the protestors would demand that Israel occupies Egypt, Iraq and Syria, throw their population into the sea (or into the desert) and establish a Judaic theocracy on the freshly liberated land. I can believe that whatever is meant by "Greater Israel" among 8 billions of people would be some that support that idea, because any crazy idea can find a person crazy enough to support it. However, comparing this idea to the level of support slogans like "from the river to the sea" enjoy right now - with thousands openly proclaiming them, and on many campuses also proceeding to attack Jewish students under them - is just non-sensical. There's no "Greater Israel" movement worth talking about seriously - but there's very much movement in support of genocide of Jews, and it's very visible and prominent.
Having (Jewish) Israeli, pre-Israeli, and pre-pre-Israli heritage, I don't personally find "From the River to the Sea" offensive but I do find it non-constructive and insensitive. Globalize the intifada otoh is awful.
I follow this topic daily, on twitter, in telegram (both Israeli and Arab groups), and among the thousands of Jews I know across the world on FB (from anti-Zionist Jews to Orthodox). This is the first time I've ever seen the phrase "Greater Israel" mentioned. I'll go research it now but it strikes me as a manufactured obscurity, while "From the River to the Sea" is prevasive.
Having social media companies attempting to guess at the intention behind ambiguous phrases seems like a bad idea.
Some people are certainly implying support for genocide when they say "from the river to the sea", while others are not. Same for "Greater Israel".
The only sane place to draw the line imo is at explicit support for hatred or violence. Even that standard can be fuzzy, but if there's a reasonable doubt about intent, I don't think we want corporations or governments making those judgments.
> For example, the phrase "from the river to the [sea]" is considered hateful by many, so it was taken down.
That’s convenient. Zionism, the ideology and its propaganda, “is considered hateful by many” too. Actually, that happy slogan of “from this body of water to that other body of water is all our precious” is shared by both parties. Israel’s flag even has it diagrammed in case you missed the slogans. The two blue lines are RIVERS. One in Egypt the other in Iraq. Believe me that many many find that “ambition” harboring “violent intent” one way or another and don’t like it.
So, Is Facebook really concerned about sensitive feelings of “many”?
Yes, it is convenient for potential victims of genocide that calling for genocide of those people is considered calling for genocide. It's also true. "From the river to the sea" is calling for the genocide of Israel population. It was known before, and Hamas proudly demonstrated it just now, there can not be any misunderstanding what they meant.
The lines on the flag have zero to do with rivers, it's a symbolic representation of a talith, a prayer garment, which can be seen in any synagogue. Try to get a bit of factual information before you go around spreading nonsense.
I don't see why "From the river to the see" would be hateful in isolation. Certainly some people who say it may have hateful thoughts in their minds, but wishing for palestinian land where Israel is now is not hateful in itself.
>I don't see why "From the river to the see" would be hateful in isolation.
It's crazy to me the a lot of the same crowd saying, "I don't see how this is hateful" are the same people who told us that the "Okay" symbol meant "white power" and was literal violence.
It isnt hateful in isolation. It could be hateful, it could also just represent a statement of solidarity with Palestinians or support for a two state solution.
Three of those are religions and one of those is an ethnicity as well. One of those also has seen almost constant persecution during history. It's concerning that this needs to be pointed out
Personally, I oppose both Russian expansionism and the genocidal antisemitic Hamas terrorist movement, so the Meta policy aligns with my views. But I am deeply uncomfortable with having a small cabal of Silicon Valley executives define the acceptable bounds of discourse for the rest of society. It would be better if they allowed all legal content no matter how objectionable and gave individual users tools to block what they don't want to see.
If social media platforms all provided the same service, there would be only one. The way it is today, each of them makes a very specific set of editorial decisions, which is why we have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Gab, etc. If every network put all the power in the users' hands, the dynamics of network effects would take over and we would be left with one social network.
I'm not saying this would be worse for the users, because I agree that "allow all content + powerful filtering tools" would suit me just fine. But it's worth noting that there would be a real serious monopoly problem if there were no conscious choices to differentiate. This would conflict with your main point of friction here: that a bunch of SV nerds shouldn't get to define our Overton window. If one platform provided free speech + filters, and became the only game in town, it wouldn't be long before we were back in the situation we're in today, except the group of toxic SV billionaires running the show would be even smaller.
So the phrase "from the river to the sea" is hateful to many but when it comes to disrespect Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) or Quran then it becomes freedom of speech no matter a vast majority of world population hates it. Hypocrisy to say the least!
Let's make it simpler- disrespect for Muhamad is a disrespect to a religion based on crusades and a prophet who is a declared pedophile according to their scripts (married and had sex with Aisha when she was 6yo).
Calling "from the river to the sea" is a call for genocide of the Jewish people. So, can you pick a side already of which of the calls is legit and which not?
> For example, the phrase "from the river to the see" is considered hateful by many
The phrase has its origins in Arab nationalism. It was coined in 1960 by the PLO to refer to the goal of an Arab state that occupies the entirety of what was Mandatory Palestine. If you ignore the subtext of “what happens to the Jews in that situation” I suppose you can make a case for it.
It’s like the confederate flag. In the 20th century there was an effort to rehabilitate it (as in the Dukes of Hazzard) as a symbol of anti-authoritarianism. And that’s the only connotation lots of people have of it. But it has a pretty unpleasant historical context.
At the very least it’s a dog whistle to the large fraction of the Muslim world that hates Jews: https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/adls-global-100-survey-wh.... Americans who use this phrase should really travel to the Muslim world to understand the antisemitism that’s just in the air. You can’t travel to my “moderate Muslim” country with an Israeli passport. Guess why that is?
Comparing the chant "from the river to the sea" with the confederate
flag is completely preposterous. The chant is a call for
liberation. Anyone who has a problem with someone's freedom is
themselves a racist and probably has a lot of views in common with
what the confederate flag stands for. Fwiw, the phrase was coined by
Jewish settlers in the 1930's
(https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/2018-12-16/ty-artic...)
and ADL is an anti-Palestinian hate organization whose opinions no one
should take seriously.
> You can’t travel to my “moderate Muslim” country with an Israeli passport. Guess why that is?
Perhaps for exactly the same reason Russian passport holders aren't welcome in a lot of places?
During the Civil Rights Era there were radical leftist groups that used the flag. The YPO in Chicago was allied with the Black Panthers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Patriots_Organization (ditto Southern Student Organizing Committee)
This is a very inaccurate comparison. Palestinians faced the violent expulsion of the Nakbah, and before that in the British mandate period there were attacks from violent Zionist groups. Currently, Palestine is militarily occupied and colonized. In this context, from the river to the sea must be understood as a desire for freedom and for justice.
The oppression faced under occupation by people in the West Bank and in Gaza for over 70 years now reminds us of how situations like Apartheid in South Africa formally continued until 1994.
To dismiss as simple “Jew hate” is really not the correct context; very disappointing to see these broad generalizations dismiss the fundamental needs for human life.
At the beginning of the conflict I noticed my feed was fully leaning towards supporting Israel, even if it was only the posts of 3 people. Somehow the 30+ people demanding the stop to the bombing of civilians didn't really start appearing until late November.
They were posting the entire time, but Meta's algorithm decided not to show it to me.
Yes... You had plenty of people saying "this is going to be your own version of Afghanistan/Iraq if you decide to do what you want to do..."
Israel wanted revenge, not a solution. Their strategy has guaranteed that there will be another cycle of violence as the kids that grew up seeing their parents blown up in airstrikes are understandably going to be ripe for recruiting into whatever organization steps into power in place of Hamas.
To quote the actual report: "This distribution of cases does not necessarily reflect the overall distribution of censorship."
They asked people to self-report instances. There is probably selection bias (maybe they advertised only to the pro-palestian crowd. Maybe the israeli crowd thinks HRW is biased and didn't want to engage. Maybe something else). There is probably also base rate falacy involved which isn't accounted for.
This just isnt the right type of study to determine if meta has a bias in censorship.
> Human Rights Watch solicited cases of any type of online censorship and of any type of viewpoint related to Israel and Palestine. Of the 1,050 cases reviewed for this report, 1,049 cases documented involved examples of online censorship and suppression of content in support of Palestine, while one case contained an example of removal of content in support of Israel.[2] This distribution of cases does not necessarily reflect the overall distribution of censorship.
So HRW may as well not have looked at the other side of the issue. They also complained that Meta's policies are informed by the United States' designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization.
I get the sense these sorts of reports are designed to turn into headlines.
I think this report actually demonstrates the anti-Israel bias HRW has been accused of. HRW points to the 9,500 content takedown requests that Israel has made as one of "four underlying, systemic factors that contributed to the [pro-Palestine] censorship." But knowing that a single Reddit post can receive more than 9,500 comments within a day[1], and that some percentage of the takedown requests likely relate to posts that threaten operational secrecy or the right to privacy of victimized Israelis, leads me to the exact opposite conclusion: that Israel's takedown requests are neither intended to censor pro-Palestine voices nor, if that were the intent, large enough in number to have an impact. Since the report provides no context for the numbers it reports makes me think the authors are more interested in pushing the idea that Israel controls the online narrative than they are in understanding what is actually happening on these platforms.
Are you saying that changes on Israel's part could cause Hamas to stop their aggression? That seems very unlikely - Hamas doesn't even pretend to be open to peaceful coexistence with Israel. Their best offer was a 10-year ceasefire in exchange for 1967 borders.
Or that it could lead to Gazans overthrowing Hamas? It's possible, but it would take a violent rebellion since Hamas doesn't hold elections, and realistically it would probably take generations for sentiment to change. It would be hard for Israelis to just accept that they will be attacked for generations, with increasing sophistication (mainly thanks to Iran's support), with no response.
This is greatly complicated by the fact that Israel materially supported Hamas and saw it as useful.
Ultimately Israelis don't have to suffer serious attacks from Hamas. Hamas doesn't have that power, militarily - only gross incompetence from the IDF allows that kind of attack.
On the other hand, Israel is not facing good geopolitical headwinds. As Yemen demonstrated, they are extremely vulnerable to a blockade. One day, in the not so distant future, the US won't be able to intercept all the missiles of Israel's enemies on its behalf, and Israel will have to contend with the threat of a total blockade.
So Israel desperately needs to make amends with its Arab neighbors, and it can stop any real attack from Hamas. That makes the situation pretty different and assymetrical.
It also bears note that, if you judge Gaza as a country, it would not be able to cause any act of agression, as the Israeli blockade alone constitutes an act of war and a casus belli. That of course doesn't justify Hamas's inhuman war crimes, but acting as if war is unprovoked is not consistent with reality - Israel has never, by the definitions in international law, stopped actively waging war against Gaza.
I agree Israel ought to be able to prevent similar ground invasions, but what about rockets?
The Iron Dome has been relatively effective so far, but the technological gap won't last forever. Hamas has already acquired rockets like the Fajr-5, despite the blockade. Once they start using guidance systems, the destruction will be much greater, and 90% interception rate won't be good enough.
Even if Israel could limit the damage in the long term, it doesn't seem politically viable to just tolerate repeated attacks with no response. So I think it's inevitable that Israel will have to remove Hamas from power, no matter the geopolitical cost.
> Ultimately Israelis don't have to suffer serious attacks from Hamas. Hamas doesn't have that power, militarily - only gross incompetence from the IDF allows that kind of attack.
While there were gigantic failures that no one denies, possibly to the level of gross incompetence, Israel is also fighting against a real enemy, not some cartoon. Hamas is also smart, is increasingly well-armed, and can wait many years until the next attack. It's not clear that Israel can defend against every conceivable attack that Hamas can mount, and staying completely vigilant all the time is very costly economically, too. (I'll note that Hamas puts a lot of money and labor into these attacks, but they are pretty freely stealing from their people; the Israeli government can't do the same.)
It's true that, on its own, Hamas can't actually conquer Israel. But it can clearly carry out massive attacks that kill thousands and completely upend all life in Israel, and it's possible that they can keep doing this every couple of years.
> So Israel desperately needs to make amends with its Arab neighbors, and it can stop any real attack from Hamas. That makes the situation pretty different and assymetrical.
Actually, Israel is on relatively good terms with all its Arab neighbors (relative to the past), and was on the verge of formalizing those good relations with Saudi Arabia. That's one of the reasons for this Hamas attack - to try and stop the Israeli-Arab peace process, because they feel (very likely correctly) that it leaves the Palestinians in a worse situation.
> It also bears note that, if you judge Gaza as a country, it would not be able to cause any act of agression, as the Israeli blockade alone constitutes an act of war and a casus belli.
Well, they did elect Hamas and fairly quickly start to shoot rockets at Israel. And by that token they are also at war with Egypt.
Gaza isn't a fully independent country, obviously, but it's also not under full military occupation like it was before. People insisting on one or the other usually have a point that it helps them prove, but reality is more complicated.
I do believe that it is directionally true that Gazans could've made far more of their situation once Israel withdrew, and Hamas has basically squandered that opportunity by turning to violence.
>in the not so distant future, the US won't be able to intercept all the missiles of Israel's enemies on its behalf, and Israel will have to contend with the threat of a total blockade.
The US + Israel + allies can/will absolutely level these countries if necessary. Both history and current events demonstrate that. Do you really think they are at the mercy of what Yemen does?
Even their updated 2017 demands did not include peace with Israel if met. They offered only a ceasefire in exchange for 1967 borders, not a permanent peace deal.
Anyway, they've shown their true colors at this point; very different statements recently:
> Since the shocking Hamas attack on Oct. 7, in which Israel says about 1,400 people were killed — most of them civilians — and more than 240 others dragged back to Gaza as captives, the group’s leaders have praised the operation, with some hoping it will set off a sustained conflict that ends any pretense of coexistence among Israel, Gaza and the countries around them. “I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us,” Taher El-Nounou, a Hamas media adviser, told The Times.
Honestly I'm not sure how we can start a peace process after the terrorist atrocities that were committed?
At this point I think the best is to just evacuate all Palestinians to the rest of the Arab countries as refugees and then just leave the contested territory as unoccupied and "dmz" like for both sides.
(This was originally a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38746496, but I detached it from there, i.e. moved it to the top level, because this subthread is better than the surrounding flamewar it was in.)
Does the existence of these Wikipedia articles now mean that I can call any information put out by Israel or the United States "biased content" and just disregard it?
No. The comment you're replying to explicitly calls out the poor methodology this report is based on and the lack of subject matter expertise shown by the authors. The Wikipedia article is supplementary information that situates this critique within a wider context. They are not saying you should dismiss the report simply because of the Wikipedia article.
Their methodology seems really flawed. They cherry picked a thousand instances of wrongly removed content, but how many posts do you think there are about the conflict on Facebook and Instagram? Tens of millions? They have no way of knowing how representative that sample is.
> Human Rights Watch published a call for evidence of online censorship…from the main Human Rights Watch accounts on Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter), and TikTok.
I don’t see how HRW can post this in good conscience without acknowledging the huge potential for voluntary response bias in this survey. Pro-Israel voices have been skeptical of HRW’s perceived Anti-Israel bias[1] for over a decade. They are not going to be following or engaging with HRW accounts, and their voices are most likely fewer in number overall[2]. The fact that 1,049 of the 1,050 comments submitted for HRW’s review were Pro-Palestine should be a red flag, not the core piece of evidence.
Exactly. Whatever your opinions on Israel and Gaza, putting out a report so cherry-picked on such a small, unrepresentative sample only serves to show HRW's biases.
No matter what your views, we should all be very concerned that a technology company that specializes in social connections is controlling what people can say to one another.
This combined with the close government coordination that was recently exposed is deeply concerning.
‘Disinformation’ seems to be more and more just ‘opinions we don’t like or support’ and this episode should serve as a warning to use all to limit their power before it’s too late.
And I don’t care if you like Triden or Brump: this shouldn’t be a partisan issue.
Hamas is a terrorist organization, apparently backed by Iran, and are constantly spreading misinformation online, this is why it's censored?
I sometimes open "The Guardian" and the amount of times they quote "The Gaza Health Ministry", which would be no more trust worthy than the North Korean or Chinese health ministry, is fucking ridiculous.
If people thought about thing more critically then we wouldn't have to sensor everything but people don't they eat it up, and get all conspiratorial.
On the other hand, I think Meta have built a shit product that requires an insane level of censoring to keep even remotely civil. Unfortunately this flawed product has dire impacts on democratic societies.
Readit News
For example, the phrase "from the river to the see" is considered hateful by many, so it was taken down. In other cases the content praised attacks by Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the US government.
From HRWs descriptions it sounds like the bulk of the "1049" content removals were clear violations of Meta's policies against support for violence.
Regardless of whether you agree, these don't seem surprising to me on light of Meta's own rules. There are of course a small number of exceptions listed.
Dead Comment
> Human Rights Watch also found repeated inaccurate application of the “adult nudity and sexual activity” policy for content related to Palestine. In every one of the cases, we reviewed where this policy was invoked, the content included images of dead Palestinians over ruins in Gaza that were clothed, not naked. For example, multiple users reported their Instagram stories being removed under this policy when they posted the same image of a Palestinian father in Gaza who was killed while he was holding his clothed daughter, who was also killed.
... so no nudity, no sexual activity
> For example, a Facebook user post that said, “How can anyone justify supporting the killing of babies and innocent civilians…” was removed under Community Standards on “bullying and harassment.” Another user posted an image on Instagram of a dead child in a hospital in Gaza with the comment, “Israel bombs the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City killing over 500…” which was removed under Community Guidelines on “violence and incitement.”
... arguing _against_ violence is flagged as harassment. Image and statement about Israeli action flagged as incitement
> In one case, an Instagram user received a warning that the comment she posted “may be hurtful to others.” The comment, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, consisted of nothing more than a series of Palestinian flag emojis.[77] In other cases, Meta hid the Palestinian flag from comment sections or removed it on the basis that it “harasses, targets, or shames others.”[78]
...that's just kinda indefensible.
> Many users reported posts on Instagram being removed when they criticized the Israeli government, including the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no matter how nuanced or careful their posts were. Meta removed these posts under its “Dangerous Organizations or Individuals” and hate speech rules, respectively.
... which is crazy since there have been plenty of reasons to criticize Netanyahu well before the Oct 7 attacks.
On the topic of "From the river to the sea", they specifically mention that posts with this phrase, as well as others
> such as “Free Palestine,” “Ceasefire Now,” and “Stop the Genocide,” were repeatedly removed by Instagram and Facebook under “spam” Community Guidelines or Standards without appearing to take into account the context of these comments.
I.e. Meta's own cited policy was not that it "is considered hateful" as you say, but that this political expression was labeled as spam. That sounds pretty bogus.
As for the "is considered hateful by many", that's true, but is also subjective, and very tangled given that prominent Israeli conservatives have used very similar phrasing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea#Simi...
If someone actually praising the Oct 7 attacks or something gets flagged/banned/etc, then sure, Meta is just applying its policies. That does not seem to be what's happening here. It's true that the report doesn't give numbers for these specific treatments, and the authors have a limited and biased view based on who responded to their call for evidence. But the limited view doesn't seem to be of Meta even-handedly and competently applying their policies.
_However_, I don't want to attribute everything to malice where incompetence may be at least a partial explanation. If motivated 3rd parties are repeatedly flagging a photo of a clothed, dead Palestinian as "nudity", and Meta's systems are built with the assumption that such user-provided flags are presumed trustworthy, then we could easily see how someone posting that photo would get incorrectly/inappropriately flagged.
Am one of those ? I always mark these as spam as I try to keep my account politics free. I have some friends that are obsessed with the Palestinian cause and there was a time this stuff would constantly appear in my feed.
The report also has some pretty strange language, like mentioning that a post which was flagged for nudity contained a picture of a dead woman, and a fully-clothed man holding her body. But... There are so, so many pictures of fully-clothed, male members of Hamas holding nude or partially-nude dead women they abducted and/or raped before murdering. Why does the report only say that the man was fully clothed? Maybe it's just a grammatical error, but they're really light on the details, and releasing the underlying data would answer a lot of questions.
Personally I am suspicious of HRW's report, since they've been caught releasing misleading reports in the past, and the director of HRW's Israel/Palestine division is a BDS activist [1]. Obviously your viewpoint may be different, but without access to the underlying information it's pretty hard to make a compelling case to either side... Which to me points to the report being more worthy of suspicion, since if it was clear-cut, they'd easily convince more people of their correctness by releasing the data.
1: https://www.ngo-monitor.org/fact-sheet-on-omar-shakirs-bds-c...
Dead Comment
Greater Israel, extending from the river to the sea, with the Palestinians as stateless people with no rights, is a de facto reality, and has been for 56 years now.
0. This is a typical map. The only indication that there is any Palestinian territory at all is that the tiny "Area A" regions are in a different color. East Jerusalem and the vast majority of the West Bank are simply shown as belonging to Israel. https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-9fb3beb756529713386cc...
It is no longer an explicit goal of Likud.
"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes" in a nutshell
Remind me, what was it that happened 56 years ago?
The irony is to talk about the irony without realising the extreme nature of the phrase “From the river to the sea…” for any of the sides. Someone can as easily adapt the same phrase for calls to remove non-jewish population from the land yet the commentator felt the urge to see the irony in “banning the phrase” (as he put it) without thinking through the outcome of using such phrase in all of it’s dangerous aspects.
>every Israeli school, there are maps on the wall that show Israel extending from the river to the sea.[0]
The linked map is from post on quora [1] which does not state that.
To the question : “What borders does Israel show in maps in school textbooks?”
It states the following:
“ It really depends on the age.
TLDR - the books mostly show area international borders with markings for area A, But don’t shy away from the existence of the P.A. In higher grades, they show the evolution of the borders, and the idea that nothing is really fixed or “promised”.
Long answer:
I’ve made a small check on books available on my Child’s elementary school online website. …”
Notice “ elementary school online website.” while commentator states: “ in almost every Israeli school, there are maps on the wall”
Even this one post from only one school speaks about variety of maps presented to children but commentator simply ignores that.
Commentator takes 1 of 10 maps posted there. The one for the smallest age and claims “This is a typical map”
The real irony though is vivid if one looks at the official logo of PLO here [2] who’s chairman is Mahmoud Abbas. It shows the whole map “from the river to the sea” without any marking for Israel. Commentator criticises Israeli maps for only :“ "Area A" regions are in a different color.” and forgot to mention that PLO does not have any color for Israel in fact. The logo is currently on the official PLO web site.
> Palestinians as stateless people with no rights, is a de facto reality, and has been for 56 years now.
The third irony is mentioning “56 years” and forgetting to mention that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 [2] pretty much to the border before 1967.
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-borders-does-Israel-show-in-maps-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organizat...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaz...
I remember some people in the arab world took side for ben laden on 9/11 but this time it's happening in the west too.
I see similar sentiments around this war all the time, "Israel deserved this terrorist attack due to imperialism" but again really not much actual support for Hamas.
when the "good guys" indiscriminately kill over 15000 children in the span of two months, I dunno what you expect but its certainly not "uncomprehensible"
Jonathan Haidt explains:
Why Antisemitism Sprouted So Quickly on Campus
https://www.afterbabel.com/p/antisemitism-on-campus
The interesting thing is that the explanation largely preceded these events, he and Greg Lukianoff documented this in their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind.
It wasn't algorithm, or glitch, or bug. It was a decision made by humans, including you know who. It's a form of crowd control. That's why it's important to have several channels for 'producers'. For others it's a good idea to have several sources. You'll see much more even if each source represents a single side (which is usually the case, 'democracies' are no different).
The ML is good enough to know whether your followers want to engage with political content. If they don't, Facebook will show them less of it.
How do you know the reason for your reason for zero reach is any different than mine? I assumed Meta's algo decided none of my friends would be interested in what I posted, not that I was being censored.
They did respond to my next 2 posts so no idea the difference.
Dead Comment
I wonder how long the comment would have been up, if it was referring to the other side instead.
edit: I see from the downvotes that my experience doesn't fit your bias. Sorry people -_-
Do you have any proof of this whatsoever? First that these posts actually exist (this I believe) and that the reason they weren't taken down was because they were about Palestinians (versus, say, overlooked so far)?
I follow this topic daily, on twitter, in telegram (both Israeli and Arab groups), and among the thousands of Jews I know across the world on FB (from anti-Zionist Jews to Orthodox). This is the first time I've ever seen the phrase "Greater Israel" mentioned. I'll go research it now but it strikes me as a manufactured obscurity, while "From the River to the Sea" is prevasive.
Some people are certainly implying support for genocide when they say "from the river to the sea", while others are not. Same for "Greater Israel".
The only sane place to draw the line imo is at explicit support for hatred or violence. Even that standard can be fuzzy, but if there's a reasonable doubt about intent, I don't think we want corporations or governments making those judgments.
That’s convenient. Zionism, the ideology and its propaganda, “is considered hateful by many” too. Actually, that happy slogan of “from this body of water to that other body of water is all our precious” is shared by both parties. Israel’s flag even has it diagrammed in case you missed the slogans. The two blue lines are RIVERS. One in Egypt the other in Iraq. Believe me that many many find that “ambition” harboring “violent intent” one way or another and don’t like it.
So, Is Facebook really concerned about sensitive feelings of “many”?
The lines on the flag have zero to do with rivers, it's a symbolic representation of a talith, a prayer garment, which can be seen in any synagogue. Try to get a bit of factual information before you go around spreading nonsense.
This sounded suspicious to me, and brief research shows it to be untrue.
It's crazy to me the a lot of the same crowd saying, "I don't see how this is hateful" are the same people who told us that the "Okay" symbol meant "white power" and was literal violence.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-inst...
Personally, I oppose both Russian expansionism and the genocidal antisemitic Hamas terrorist movement, so the Meta policy aligns with my views. But I am deeply uncomfortable with having a small cabal of Silicon Valley executives define the acceptable bounds of discourse for the rest of society. It would be better if they allowed all legal content no matter how objectionable and gave individual users tools to block what they don't want to see.
I'm not saying this would be worse for the users, because I agree that "allow all content + powerful filtering tools" would suit me just fine. But it's worth noting that there would be a real serious monopoly problem if there were no conscious choices to differentiate. This would conflict with your main point of friction here: that a bunch of SV nerds shouldn't get to define our Overton window. If one platform provided free speech + filters, and became the only game in town, it wouldn't be long before we were back in the situation we're in today, except the group of toxic SV billionaires running the show would be even smaller.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
The phrase has its origins in Arab nationalism. It was coined in 1960 by the PLO to refer to the goal of an Arab state that occupies the entirety of what was Mandatory Palestine. If you ignore the subtext of “what happens to the Jews in that situation” I suppose you can make a case for it.
It’s like the confederate flag. In the 20th century there was an effort to rehabilitate it (as in the Dukes of Hazzard) as a symbol of anti-authoritarianism. And that’s the only connotation lots of people have of it. But it has a pretty unpleasant historical context.
At the very least it’s a dog whistle to the large fraction of the Muslim world that hates Jews: https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/adls-global-100-survey-wh.... Americans who use this phrase should really travel to the Muslim world to understand the antisemitism that’s just in the air. You can’t travel to my “moderate Muslim” country with an Israeli passport. Guess why that is?
> You can’t travel to my “moderate Muslim” country with an Israeli passport. Guess why that is?
Perhaps for exactly the same reason Russian passport holders aren't welcome in a lot of places?
The oppression faced under occupation by people in the West Bank and in Gaza for over 70 years now reminds us of how situations like Apartheid in South Africa formally continued until 1994.
To dismiss as simple “Jew hate” is really not the correct context; very disappointing to see these broad generalizations dismiss the fundamental needs for human life.
Never got that one. Nothing like the flag of a breakaway state founded to preserve chattel slavery as a symbol of… anti-authoritarianism?
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
They were posting the entire time, but Meta's algorithm decided not to show it to me.
Israel wanted revenge, not a solution. Their strategy has guaranteed that there will be another cycle of violence as the kids that grew up seeing their parents blown up in airstrikes are understandably going to be ripe for recruiting into whatever organization steps into power in place of Hamas.
Dead Comment
To quote the actual report: "This distribution of cases does not necessarily reflect the overall distribution of censorship."
They asked people to self-report instances. There is probably selection bias (maybe they advertised only to the pro-palestian crowd. Maybe the israeli crowd thinks HRW is biased and didn't want to engage. Maybe something else). There is probably also base rate falacy involved which isn't accounted for.
This just isnt the right type of study to determine if meta has a bias in censorship.
> Human Rights Watch solicited cases of any type of online censorship and of any type of viewpoint related to Israel and Palestine. Of the 1,050 cases reviewed for this report, 1,049 cases documented involved examples of online censorship and suppression of content in support of Palestine, while one case contained an example of removal of content in support of Israel.[2] This distribution of cases does not necessarily reflect the overall distribution of censorship.
So HRW may as well not have looked at the other side of the issue. They also complained that Meta's policies are informed by the United States' designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization.
I get the sense these sorts of reports are designed to turn into headlines.
Bingo.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/news/top/?sort=top&t=year
Deleted Comment
Or that it could lead to Gazans overthrowing Hamas? It's possible, but it would take a violent rebellion since Hamas doesn't hold elections, and realistically it would probably take generations for sentiment to change. It would be hard for Israelis to just accept that they will be attacked for generations, with increasing sophistication (mainly thanks to Iran's support), with no response.
Ultimately Israelis don't have to suffer serious attacks from Hamas. Hamas doesn't have that power, militarily - only gross incompetence from the IDF allows that kind of attack.
On the other hand, Israel is not facing good geopolitical headwinds. As Yemen demonstrated, they are extremely vulnerable to a blockade. One day, in the not so distant future, the US won't be able to intercept all the missiles of Israel's enemies on its behalf, and Israel will have to contend with the threat of a total blockade.
So Israel desperately needs to make amends with its Arab neighbors, and it can stop any real attack from Hamas. That makes the situation pretty different and assymetrical.
It also bears note that, if you judge Gaza as a country, it would not be able to cause any act of agression, as the Israeli blockade alone constitutes an act of war and a casus belli. That of course doesn't justify Hamas's inhuman war crimes, but acting as if war is unprovoked is not consistent with reality - Israel has never, by the definitions in international law, stopped actively waging war against Gaza.
The Iron Dome has been relatively effective so far, but the technological gap won't last forever. Hamas has already acquired rockets like the Fajr-5, despite the blockade. Once they start using guidance systems, the destruction will be much greater, and 90% interception rate won't be good enough.
Even if Israel could limit the damage in the long term, it doesn't seem politically viable to just tolerate repeated attacks with no response. So I think it's inevitable that Israel will have to remove Hamas from power, no matter the geopolitical cost.
While there were gigantic failures that no one denies, possibly to the level of gross incompetence, Israel is also fighting against a real enemy, not some cartoon. Hamas is also smart, is increasingly well-armed, and can wait many years until the next attack. It's not clear that Israel can defend against every conceivable attack that Hamas can mount, and staying completely vigilant all the time is very costly economically, too. (I'll note that Hamas puts a lot of money and labor into these attacks, but they are pretty freely stealing from their people; the Israeli government can't do the same.)
It's true that, on its own, Hamas can't actually conquer Israel. But it can clearly carry out massive attacks that kill thousands and completely upend all life in Israel, and it's possible that they can keep doing this every couple of years.
> So Israel desperately needs to make amends with its Arab neighbors, and it can stop any real attack from Hamas. That makes the situation pretty different and assymetrical.
Actually, Israel is on relatively good terms with all its Arab neighbors (relative to the past), and was on the verge of formalizing those good relations with Saudi Arabia. That's one of the reasons for this Hamas attack - to try and stop the Israeli-Arab peace process, because they feel (very likely correctly) that it leaves the Palestinians in a worse situation.
> It also bears note that, if you judge Gaza as a country, it would not be able to cause any act of agression, as the Israeli blockade alone constitutes an act of war and a casus belli.
Well, they did elect Hamas and fairly quickly start to shoot rockets at Israel. And by that token they are also at war with Egypt.
Gaza isn't a fully independent country, obviously, but it's also not under full military occupation like it was before. People insisting on one or the other usually have a point that it helps them prove, but reality is more complicated.
I do believe that it is directionally true that Gazans could've made far more of their situation once Israel withdrew, and Hamas has basically squandered that opportunity by turning to violence.
The US + Israel + allies can/will absolutely level these countries if necessary. Both history and current events demonstrate that. Do you really think they are at the mercy of what Yemen does?
That was 2004. By 2017, their asks, for all intents and purposes, were the same as the PA: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/01/hamas-new-char...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas
Anyway, they've shown their true colors at this point; very different statements recently:
> Since the shocking Hamas attack on Oct. 7, in which Israel says about 1,400 people were killed — most of them civilians — and more than 240 others dragged back to Gaza as captives, the group’s leaders have praised the operation, with some hoping it will set off a sustained conflict that ends any pretense of coexistence among Israel, Gaza and the countries around them. “I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us,” Taher El-Nounou, a Hamas media adviser, told The Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/world/middleeast/hamas-is...
Deleted Comment
It will likely take forever unless steps are taken to initiate a peace process.
At this point I think the best is to just evacuate all Palestinians to the rest of the Arab countries as refugees and then just leave the contested territory as unoccupied and "dmz" like for both sides.
And honestly where tf is the UN in all of this?
How much content is posted every day on meta? How many content removal decisions are taken every day by meta?
Hint: Over 1 billion Stories are posted every day.
So even if 1049 content removals would happen on a single day - but this "evidence" is collected over a much longer time period.
You have to read about HRW and its campaign against Israel to maybe understand why HRW continue to post this type of propaganda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Human_Rights_Watc...
The guardian did a very bad job at picking up this biased content.
Does the existence of these Wikipedia articles now mean that I can call any information put out by Israel or the United States "biased content" and just disregard it?
Deleted Comment
I don’t see how HRW can post this in good conscience without acknowledging the huge potential for voluntary response bias in this survey. Pro-Israel voices have been skeptical of HRW’s perceived Anti-Israel bias[1] for over a decade. They are not going to be following or engaging with HRW accounts, and their voices are most likely fewer in number overall[2]. The fact that 1,049 of the 1,050 comments submitted for HRW’s review were Pro-Palestine should be a red flag, not the core piece of evidence.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204619004574318...
[2] https://wpde.com/amp/news/nation-world/support-for-palestine...
This combined with the close government coordination that was recently exposed is deeply concerning.
‘Disinformation’ seems to be more and more just ‘opinions we don’t like or support’ and this episode should serve as a warning to use all to limit their power before it’s too late.
And I don’t care if you like Triden or Brump: this shouldn’t be a partisan issue.
I sometimes open "The Guardian" and the amount of times they quote "The Gaza Health Ministry", which would be no more trust worthy than the North Korean or Chinese health ministry, is fucking ridiculous.
If people thought about thing more critically then we wouldn't have to sensor everything but people don't they eat it up, and get all conspiratorial.
On the other hand, I think Meta have built a shit product that requires an insane level of censoring to keep even remotely civil. Unfortunately this flawed product has dire impacts on democratic societies.
You seem to be making the mistake that many do and conflating Hamas with the Palestinian people. The article is not about posts in support of Hamas.