- The Washington Times - Tuesday, July 9, 2024

Meta is expanding its hate speech policy on its platforms to remove more posts that refer to Zionists as a stand-in for Jews or Israelis.

In a blog post Tuesday, Meta said it would erase attacks on Zionists when the notation isn’t about the Zionist political ideology.

“This term often refers to supporters of a political movement, which is not itself a protected characteristic under our policies, but in some cases may be used as a proxy to refer to Jewish or Israeli people, which are protected characteristics under our Hate Speech policy,” the blog post reads.

Under Meta’s rules, posts targeting people based on protected characteristics such as race, gender or ethnicity are prohibited. The company said the updated hate speech policy is better suited to combat antisemitism on its Facebook, Instagram and Threads platforms.

Meta acknowledged that enforcing the new policy will be tricky. Many users critical of Israel and its war against Hamas have accused Facebook and Instagram of suppressing anti-Israel content.

“This challenge is not new, and enforcement of any policy cannot happen overnight — there is a range of content that can potentially violate these policies, and it will take time to train our reviewers and systems on these changes,” Meta said. “We are grateful to many partners for their input and candor as we work to keep our platform safe.”

Social media companies have struggled to police Israeli-Palestinian discourse in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Regulators and antisemitism watchdogs have accused Meta and X of allowing hateful and violent content on their platforms.

• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.

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