Facebook allows hate sites, ignores warnings, says group

by Allen McDuffee

In the face of what they call Facebook’s blind eye toward hate speech, a band of self-proclaimed Jewish activists has stepped up cyber-attacks on Facebook groups it believes are engaged in “hate mongering, terror supporting,” Holocaust denying anti-Semitic activity.

The Jewish Internet Defense Force (JIDF) has aggressively assaulted hundreds of Facebook member pages, depopulating the membership pools by deleting them one-by-one.

At the core of the controversy is a campaign that the JIDF has launched against hundreds of groups and individuals which the JIDF argues have violated the Facebook usage policy. The campaign, which reached its height in the summer and had its most recent episode in October, called on Facebook to deactivate offensive pages because the content violated the Facebook usage policy.

A spokesperson for the popular social networking website said that while Facebook “believe[s] users should be able to express themselves and their point of view, certain kinds of speech simply do not belong in a community like Facebook.”

Specifically, users may not post or share content “that is obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit; depicts graphic or gratuitous violence; makes threats of any kind or that intimidates, harasses, or bullies anyone; is derogatory, demeaning, malicious, defamatory, abusive, offensive or hateful.”

As a part of their customer service department, Facebook employs an investigative team to combat improper content. “They also reactively follow up with the concerns of those who write to them,” said the Facebook spokesperson.

But the JIDF says it is unclear which member pages Facebook decides to pursue, that the Facebook usage policy is a policy in name only, and that their customer service department isn’t listening.

Jessie Daniels, Hunter College sociology professor, says that Facebook can defer these complaints because “they just don’t care.” The numbers are small compared to the overall population of Facebook users and have the appearance of isolated cases. She also says that it’s not surprising that the primary voice on matters of hate speech is a Jewish- or Israeli-oriented group because there is an “absence of a real anti-racism movement in the United States.”

Others advocate a proactive Facebook approach. Jesse Hirsh, a Canadian media figure and commentator, said “Companies like Facebook absolutely should do more to police their environments and ensure conflicts between parties can be resolved in fair and non-violent means.” Unfortunately, as Hirsh points out, places like Facebook don’t adequately invest in these types of issues. “I consider it a blind spot in their business plans that they do not understand either the risk or the potential of providing governance services and responsibilities with regard to the spaces they provide,” says Hirsh.

Nick O’Neill, editor of allfacebook.com, however, argues that “Facebook should have an emphasis on freedom of speech rather than censorship.” “For hate groups,” he says “it always makes [sense] to block those but it's impossible to monitor every single group created on Facebook. We should rely on our social relationships to create natural filters which prevent future hate speech.”

Earlier this year, by creating four Facebook groups, the JIDF initiated a 35-day campaign urging 5,000 people to report a list of hundreds of groups. Facebook, however, responded by saying that they considered some of the sites JIDF challenged to be places where legitimate political discourse takes place.

The JIDF is baffled, for example, as to how a group called “F_ _ _ Israel and Their Holocaust Bullshit” could be considered legitimate political discourse.

Dissatisfied with the Facebook response, the JIDF took matters into their own hands and seized control of as many pages as possible, but also acknowledged that new pages pop up every day.

The JIDF has not disclosed the means by which they infiltrated member pages, but insists that “we are not involved in any hacking, illegal, or vigilante activity, despite Arab claims and the insinuation…and by the ADL [Anti-Defamation League], that we are.”

However, one group listed on the JIDF list as offensive, “F_ _ _ Israel”, now appears to be in the hands of the JIDF. Hardly offensive speech, the page — with more than 10,000 members — now reads, “you have understood, this title is just a joke! everybody in this group loves Israel, we may be muslims, jewish, christians, there are no differences between us. we love Israel…(sic)” It continues, “ps: I can't change the group title!”

While Facebook does not make statistics available regarding deactivated profiles, the JIDF boasted that they succeeded in deleting 106 groups and 125,290 members. It is not always clear which pages were deleted by Facebook as a result of JIDF pressures and which ones by alternative JIDF methods.

Facebook did not respond to questions about the JIDF or their methods for taking control of their target groups’ pages, but Facebook reportedly has on more than one occasion taken a member page out of the hands of the JIDF and returned the page to its original administrator.

The member page, “‘Israel’ is Not a Country!” is one that was taken over by the JIDF, only to later be returned to its original administrators. Apparently drawing enough attention to the page and applying enough pressure, Facebook deleted “‘Israel’ is Not a Country!” in September. Similarly, after a Facebook effort to remove the page, “Eliminate Israel From Being,” was recently deleted. Variations of both groups have resurfaced

But “Israel: The Lie,” with more than 700 members, explicitly states, “we do not hate JEWS. we just don’t like the terrorist state of ‘israel’…we do NOT support violence…we are not a racist/anti-semitic group. we are making a difference between Judaism/Jews and Zionist/Settlers/Criminals.” Nonetheless, “Israel: The Lie” appears on the JIDF list.

The discrepancy in Facebook’s periodic disciplinary actions and their intermittent assertion that a page is engaged in legitimate political discourse naturally raises a free speech vs. hate speech question.

Daniels, author of the forthcoming book Cyber Racism, suggests that we ought to carefully guard against invoking free speech arguments. “The problem is that in the U.S. we tend to interpret these [instances] through an extremist, knee-jerk First Amendment lens that's actually not in line with what the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.

For example, in Virginia v. Black, the courts ruled that a 'burning cross' was not protected speech.” All too often, according to Daniels, these pages on Facebook “amount to a burning cross for the digital era.” And when it’s applied to a country, it runs the risk of being “a proxy for a group of people.” Israel is a difficult case because it’s “possible to be critical of Israel and not be anti-Semitic, but it's often a fine line.”

The JIDF, whose name mimics that of the Israel Defense Forces, has also launched similar campaigns against YouTube, Google Maps, and Wikipedia, among others.

The collective has worked together for eight years “to eradicate the problems we face online and to create the publicity that will cause those with the power to take the needed action themselves,” according to a statement on the JIDF website.

“We work to bring together individuals on different fronts, but with similar goals of Jewish pride, knowledge, and unity, and represent a younger generation of Jewish leaders, a new approach, and a real grassroots effort for change,” the statement said.

But others suggest that, given their activity outside of issues related to anti-Semitism, such as anti-Obama content on their website, the JIDF represents a thinly-veiled conservative agenda that relies on fear-mongering tactics to further its agenda.

Facebook has more than 110 million active users and is in the top five most trafficked websites in the world.

Allen McDuffee writes about politics and Middle East affairs. He blogs at governmentalityblog.com and is currently working on a book project called No Child Left Unrecruited.

Source: thejidf.org/