The two huge media companies’ respective postures were on sharp display in a recent
signed between the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating
Antisemitism and by Internet giants Google and Facebook. The agreement,
reached on May 7, declares that both sides will work together to “build
best practices for understanding, reporting upon and responding to
Internet hate.”
But Twitter was notably absent from the agreement. The
company has consistently rejected attempts to intervene with its
content, citing its concern for maintaining free speech.
“Facebook has been very responsive, cooperative and
committed to fighting Internet hate,” said Deborah Lauter, director of
civil rights at the Anti-Defamation League, a group that has played a
key role in reaching understandings with social media providers.
Twitter, Lauter admitted, has been slower to respond to requests for
removing hate speech and offensive Tweets. “But as Twitter grows,
they’ll have to go through this stage and understand this is a problem
that needs to be solved,” she said.
This divide does not come as a surprise to those who
have been following the two companies on issues related to real or
perceived encroachment on their users’ freedom to share any content
through a social media platform. Twitter, self-described by its leaders
as
has largely resisted lending itself to restrictions on content by
either governments or citizen groups. It has, for example, in the
absence of court orders of warrants, fought government demands for
records of its users in criminal and terror-related investigations —
even as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has praised it and other
digital media for resisting encroachments by authoritarian governments
abroad.
The company has also been attentive to complaints – if
there are enough of them – from individual users concerned about
offensive content. It was this type of citizen activism that recently
led Facebook to
block
a posting by an Israeli cartoonist depicting the Jewish state as a
giant who still believes he is the iconic Jewish boy raising his hands
in fear in face of the Nazi soldiers. This type of censorship does not
seem to have a clear political color; Facebook has also removed content
following complaints from users aligned with the Israeli left, such as a
recent post seen as inciting against African asylum seekers in Israel.
Facebook played host for several meetings leading to
the establishment of an Anti-Cyberhate Working Group by the
Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism, a
nongovernmental organization composed of interested parliamentarians
from around the world. Google joined Facebook as the other major
participant in the newly established task force, a product of the
coalition’s May 7 agreement.
“We welcome the commitments of Google and Facebook to
participate in this dialogue to combat online hate speech, Holocaust
denial and anti-Semitism,” ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman, said
in a statement. “Working alongside the Internet’s leaders will allow
for the development of industry standards that balance effectiveness
with respect for the right to free speech.”
Jewish and pro-Israeli activists have been monitoring
posts on Facebook ever since it gained prominence as the leading vehicle
for internet-based social engagement. An early test in March 2011 made
clear that the social network is open to dialogue with those seeking to
rein in speech they view as extremist.
An Arabic page put up then called for a “third
Palestinian intifada,” and included content posted by the page’s
administrators quoting a hadith, or saying of the Prophet, that has been
appropriated by radical groups: “The hour [of redemption] does not come
until the Muslims fight the Jews and even the stones and trees say, ‘O
Muslim, a Jew is behind me, so kill him.’”
The Arabic language Facebook page attracted more than
330,000 fans, according to the Jerusalem Post, and called for a mass
march into Israel from neighboring countries. The call appeared to echo
the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia taking place at the time.
But a number of messages posted by fans contained both implicit and
explicit violent content, according to a translation of the site quoted
by the Post.
The content led Israeli Minister of Information and Diaspora Yuli Edelstein to send a
letter
to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO, asking him to remove
the page. Jewish groups also marshaled a mass pressure campaign for the
page’s removal. After initially resisting, Facebook complied. Andrew
Noyes, a Facebook spokesman
said the page was removed because it contained “direct calls for violence or expressions of hate.”
“They lagged on that one a bit, but when they saw the reactions, they removed it,” Lauter said.
She added that despite Facebook’s understanding of
Jewish groups’ concerns, the social media site is still slow in
responding to requests to remove pages when it comes to Holocaust
deniers.
Facebook, which has more than 800 million users
worldwide, has shown its willingness to address concerns of other
interest groups and of governments, as well. Its public guidelines
specifically
allow
the social network to provide government and law enforcement agencies
with information on its users as it determines necessary, even in the
absence of a court order.
Free speech advocates say that Facebook’s compliant stance is not necessarily related to the company’s recent
public offering,
which brought in $5 billion. Jillian York, Director for International
Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group
devoted to protecting Internet freedom, said Facebook’s calculations
relate mainly to the social network’s aspiration to expand globally.
“They want to get into the Chinese market,” York said.
“That is why Facebook is careful not to identify itself with the Arab
Spring or any other kind of activism.”
The run-ins with authorities in Pakistan made the differences in approach between Facebook and Twitter crystal clear.
On May 20, Pakistani regulators shut down Twitter for eight hours after it refused to remove content promoting the third annual
Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.
The event was created in 2010 as a campaign supporting free speech
after Muslims in some countries violently protested offending visual
depictions of Islam’s founder. The Pakistani government asked Twitter to
block all content advocating participation in the event, but Twitter
turned it down, provoking Pakistan’s censorship. Despite this, at the
end of the day, it was the Pakistani authorities that backed off and
removed their block on accessing Twitter from within the country.
When Pakistan made the same demand of Facebook in 2010, Facebook agreed to take down the page promoting the event.
The contrasting responses highlight the fact that
neither of the social media platforms seems to base its decisions on the
religion of those offended. Their respective stances reflect broader
social and economic outlooks.
Twitter has made its resistance against requests to
provide information to government and police investigations part of its
brand.
Under the 2002 USA Patriot Act, the government can
issue secret requests, known as national security letters, demanding
Internet carriers and social media platforms to provide information on
users without a court order and without informing users that their
personal information was shared with the government. Some 50,000
national security letters are issued annually and most go unknown.
Twitter has been the only large provider to challenge the requests,
demanding it be allowed to notify users when handing over their
information to the government.
In recent months, Twitter has been
battling
in courts against an attempt by the Manhattan district attorney’s
office to have the company provide three months of records on Malcolm
Harris, a user who was active in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.
The American Civil Liberties Union took on the case,
stating that “Twitter should be applauded,” for rejecting government
attempts to reach its users’ records.
But what wins applause from some is problematic for
others. In their efforts to get Twitter to respond to their concerns,
Jewish activists invoke the concept of “corporate responsibility.” It’s a
voluntary standard, but one that is expected from large Internet and
social media providers, and would rein in content deemed hateful on
their platforms.
“Right now we are talking about conversations and work
groups,” Lauter said when describing the tools used to convince
companies like Twitter to take action. But other forms of pressure
exist, including shareholder activity for publicly traded companies.
Jewish advocacy groups stress that limiting perceived
hate on Facebook and Twitter is not a First Amendment issue, since there
is no government intervention blocking free speech. But, at the EFF,
York fears overuse of pressure. “My concern is that if they respond to
the ADL, other groups will ask for other limitations,” she warned. “It
is a slippery slope.”
Contact Nathan Guttman at guttman@forward.com
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