Following the attack on Israel by the Islamist Hamas, the Facebook company Meta is taking additional measures to prevent the spread of illegal and misleading content online.
In the first three days after the attack on Saturday last week alone, 795,000 posts in Arabic and Hebrew were removed or marked as disturbing, Meta said yesterday. During this time, seven times more posts in these languages were deleted every day than the average of the past two months.
Further steps include deleting, upon notification, those posts in which suspected hostages can clearly be identified. The search function has been deactivated for a number of keywords (hashtags) on Instagram, among which there were numerous violations of content rules. Meta takes particular care with live video, also in view of threats from Hamas to show hostages. The function has been deactivated for some users who had previously violated the rules.
Warning from EU Commissioner
Meta also pointed out that the company tracked down and removed a network of profiles linked to Hamas in 2021. These fake accounts tried to return to the platform.
The company published the information after a warning from EU Commissioner Thierry Breton. Breton wrote in a letter on Wednesday that he wanted to be informed immediately about the details of the measures Facebook has taken to curb harmful content. After Elon Musk’s online platform X responded to a similar request with very general information, the service received an official list of questions from the EU Commission. Breton had referred to evidence that X had manipulated images and recordings from video games in circulation that were passed off as real recordings.
The situation surrounding the Hamas attack is the first major test for the new EU law DSA (Digital Services Act), which obliges online platforms to take strict action against, among other things, hate speech.
