The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) on Tuesday released a “Digital Terrorism and Hate Report Card,” which indicated major social media platforms such as TikTok and Twitter had significant problems addressing and moderating the proliferation of antisemitic content on their sites.
Facebook, which also owns and administers Instagram, earned a C, while TikTok and Twitter were given a D and D-. Google and Reddit received the highest grades of all platforms assessed by SWC, earning and B and B-.
SWC noted that TikTok, one of the fastest growing and most controversial social media platforms in the world, does not actively monitor or remove antisemitic content from its platform.
Memes on TikTok incorporating derogatory language towards Jews along with images making light of the Holocaust were shared with The Algemeiner by Rick Eaton, Director of Research at SWC on Wednesday during a virtual presentation of the group’s findings. Eaton keeps an archive containing dozens of similarly offensive posts.
Eaton explained that TikTok’s recent arrival to the social media scene is one reason why it does not yet have a robust content moderation team.
“Look, three years ago, TikTok was nothing,” he said. “Now they have a billion users. The problem is that they never had the infrastructure in place to deal with the amount of antisemitism, racism, bigotry, and overall hate that’s out there.”
A illustration depicting the “Happy Merchant,” a drawing of a man caricatured as stereotypically Jewish and rubbing his palms together. In the mind of antisemites on the far-left and far-right, posting the image is a subversive act demonstrating one’s opposition to so-called “Jewish power,” Eaton added.
The report recommended that all social media companies adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which describes antisemitism as a “certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews” and includes a list of examples ranging from Holocaust denial and trivialization to the rejection of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination.
“Accept the IHRA definition. Create a policy. Adhere to your policy,” he continued. “Take antisemitic material seriously. One of the things that we’ve been doing is talking with social media companies about educating their employees about antisemitism. Some things they ought to be able to figure out very quickly, but they don’t always get it.”
Content moderation on Twitter is also poor, Eaton said.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform, which has over 500 million users, has brought droves of neo-Nazis and extremists to the platform, according to a report published by Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) in February.
Data compiled by Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) with support from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) shows that antisemitic tweets mentioning George Soros and ‘globalists’ have doubled since he first offered to buy it in April. Additionally, “Groyper accounts,” i.e. those operated by neo-Nazis, grew by roughly 2,000 percent on the day Musk announced that he would join Twitter’s board and by 1,000 percent since his acquisition of it was completed.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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