from Hacker News

Meta's Israel Policy Chief tried to suppress pro-Palestinian posts

by no_exit on 10/21/24, 6:38 PM with 17 comments

• by JohnMakin on 10/21/24, 8:59 PM

  It has been extremely obvious to big social media personalities for a while that this has been happening, and research has been done regarding it which I'm sure will come out in the next few years. Whether or not it will lead to anything meaningful, I have no idea, but I struggle to see, as the article points out, why the Israeli government should have such close access to channels such as these and very senior employees working on their behalf. No matter what your view, this seems less than ideal.

• by lolinder on 10/21/24, 6:44 PM

  > It’s unclear if Cutler’s attempts to use Meta’s internal censorship system were successful; the company declined to say what ultimately happened to posts that Cutler flagged. It’s not Cutler’s decision whether flagged content is ultimately censored; another team is responsible for moderation decisions.

  > In a statement, spokesperson Dani Lever wrote “who flags a particular piece of content for review is irrelevant because our policies govern what is and isn’t allowed on platform. In fact, the expectation of many teams at Meta, including Public Policy, is to escalate content that might violate our policies when they become aware of it, and they do so across regions and issue areas. Whenever any piece of content is flagged, a separate team of experts then reviews whether it violates our policies.”

• by no_exit on 10/21/24, 7:03 PM

  > Cutler joined Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, in 2016 after years of high-level work in the Israeli government. Her resumé includes several years at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., where she worked in public affairs and as its chief of staff from 2013 to 2016, as well as a stint as a campaign adviser for the right-wing Likud party and nearly five years as an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Upon her hiring in 2016, Gilad Erdan, then minister of public security, strategic affairs and information, celebrated the move, saying it marked “an advance in dialogue between the State of Israel and Facebook.”

  > Emerson Brooking, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, was reminded of the case of Ankhi Das, Facebook’s former policy head for India — another rare instance in which a single country had its own dedicated representative within the company. Das resigned from her position in 2020 after a Wall Street Journal report found she had lobbied for the uneven enforcement of hate speech rules that benefited India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party, which she supported personally. “Meta is the communications platform for much for the world, but of course not every voice is heard equally,” Brooking said in an interview.

  > As recently as February 2023, Cutler’s name was floated as a possible next head of the Israeli Strategic Affairs Ministry, a government propaganda office tasked with surveilling and undermining protesters and activists abroad. The ministry has reportedly made extensive use of Meta’s platforms to infiltrate student groups and conduct propaganda campaigns. In June, Haaretz reported a project originally founded by the ministry had targeted Black lawmakers in the U.S. with “hundreds” of phony Facebook and Instagram accounts “to aggressively promote purported articles that served the Israeli narrative.” Meta later shut these accounts down.

• by nielsbot on 10/21/24, 8:53 PM

  This story is also available on Apple News for those who don't want to enter an e-mail address on theintercept.com: https://apple.news/AA2fJG0tTR0mqcl9wK7wMKg

• by _blk on 10/21/24, 8:46 PM

  Seems to be company policy

  https://t.me/OKeefeMediaGroup/1432

• by tonymet on 10/21/24, 6:44 PM

  Didn't Zuckerberg just apologize a few weeks ago about censorship?

• by CommanderData on 10/21/24, 8:54 PM

  Tried?

  All social media is blatantly censored and Pro-Palestine media suppressed. The truth will come out but by then the primary objective is complete.

• by andag on 10/23/24, 4:35 PM

  Flagged.... What a surprise

• by anon115 on 10/21/24, 8:04 PM

  of course it did.....