Tech

Meta, X, and TikTok Committed to Fight Antisemitism

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The U.S. government has requested that networking platforms be more proactive in combating antisemitism on their social media sites.

  • Microsoft, Alphabet, TikTok, Meta, and X representatives met with the US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.
  • She requested that each company have a team member dedicated to the cause.

The U.S. is pressuring X, Meta, TikTok, Microsoft, and Google to put more effort into combating the antisemitism on their social media sites, once again interfering to ensure that they do the right thing.

Since their inception, digital networking platforms have had problems controlling the spread of hate which victimized people over their religion, skin color, and ethnicity—over anything that sets them apart from the majority. And while this bigotry is unfortunately common in real life, it’s amplified on the internet, especially on social media apps like TikTok. There’s something about the anonymity of the internet and social media applications that give users the ‘courage’ to be awful to others. They hide behind social media handles and spew their hate.

A Key Difference

Whenever something politically charged occurs, there seems to be an uptick in the hate. After October 7th, the discourse around the Israeli-Palestinian war left the Middle East— where it had been confined for the better part of 75 years—and hit the West full force.

Gaza under Israeli bombing videos started going around, and people started talking about the injustices that occurred and still are occurring in Palestine. A lot of them failed to distinguish between a Jew and a Zionist. The former is a person who follows Judaism, while the other believes in the Jewish nationalistic movement that calls for the creation of a Jewish national state in Palestine. Those are not the same thing. You can be one without the other. This misconception has led to antisemitism spreading through these platforms. It doesn’t matter if they are old or new social media posts or if they were on apps like Instagram, or X; everything was amplified.

Kindly Do Something

According to Bloomberg News, Deborah Lipstadt, US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, met with representatives of some of the key networking platforms. The list includes Alphabet—Google’s parent company—Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, and X (FKA Twitter).

She asked each of the companies to task a policy team member with addressing the issue and training others to identify implicit antisemitism and differentiate between criticism of the Israeli government and hate. This team member would also collect, analyze, and share information about the trends that push a hostile antisemite narrative.

Speaking with Bloomberg News, Lipstadt shared her hope that these networking platforms will comply “in the not-too-distant future,” despite the moves being voluntary. Only Google, Meta, and TikTok commented on the situation with some version of ‘thank you for the meeting, we are committed to the cause.’ X and Microsoft, however, declined to share a statement.

Referee

This is not the first time the American government has had to intervene, so its tech companies do the right thing for their users and humanity in general.

In 2021, the House Committee on the Judiciary approved several antitrust legislations, including the American Innovation and Choice Online (AICO), to stop big tech companies from engaging in anti-competitiveness activities. They basically forced them to leave some pie for others.

The government forced these companies to prioritize children’s safety on their platforms with the Kids Online Safety Act. However, Meta is still under intense scrutiny, as it’s not doing enough.

Let’s not forget when the U.S. was trying to convince these companies to ethically develop AI so they wouldn’t doom us all. While the government couldn’t force them in this instance, they definitely ‘strongly recommended’ that they do more through President Biden’s ‘Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.’

Big Tech companies are not going to start doing the right thing for the people without governmental prompting any time soon. The government will have to keep a watchful eye on them until they can’t invent, update, and mess with technology.

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