The Conference of European Rabbis is endorsing an international boycott of Facebook over the social media platform's permissive policies on hate speech and incitement.
"Anti-Semitism, racism, and slander are not opinions, they herald crime," conference president Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt said.
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"We must force the operators of social media networks to take responsibility. It's painful to see how little Facebook is trying to do," Goldschmidt said.
A number of corporations and large companies around the world have announced they would be pulling paid ads from Facebook, claiming that the network's algorithm encouraged rifts and divisiveness.
The Conference of European Rabbis is an umbrella group that represents over 700 chief rabbis and leaders of Jewish communities in Europe. Since its founding, one of the conference's aims has been to fight anti-Semitism. In recent years, it has expanded that battle to include social media.
The CER is calling for "a coordinated international approach" to fighting hate content on social media platforms.
Goldschmidt published an article in which he said that the operators of "Facebook, Twitter, Google – they all have an obligation. If you have money, you can stop hatred and incitement. Anti-Semitism, racism, and slander are not opinions, they herald crime."
The rabbi went on to say that the platforms must "erase anti-Semitic messages of hate, and not after days or weeks of investigations, but immediately. Especially during the corona crisis, in which populist moods spread quickly – not to ban people or to censor, but to stop crimes from taking place in the real world."
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