The largest Facebook group in Norway, dedicated to combating antisemitism, posted the video showing the condition of Israeli hostage Evyatar David, which had been published by Hamas. According to the group, Facebook removed the video and deleted the post, citing concerns that "the video may contain symbols, glorification, or support for individuals and organizations we define as dangerous."

According to members of the group, this has created a situation in which images of starving children and adults from Gaza are broadcast globally and widely shared on social media, while a video exposing the systematic and horrific starvation of Israeli hostages by Hamas was immediately deleted by Facebook.

"The Norwegian media refuses to show images or videos of Israeli hostages being starved by the Palestinian terrorist organizations in Gaza," said Elpeleg. "This is an attempt to silence us. It's been nearly a full day since the video was published and not a single major media outlet here has covered it. It's like North Korea, they only show what fits the agenda."

The group says the video remains visible on its Telegram channel.

In response, Meta Israel said: "Hamas is designated by the US government as a foreign terrorist organization and is similarly defined by our Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy at Meta. This means that any content produced and disseminated by Hamas is banned from our platforms, and we remove it accordingly."

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Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has announced a significant update to its content moderation policy regarding posts that mention the word "Zionism." The company will now remove more posts that attack Zionism or its supporters when the term is used as a proxy for Jewish people or Israelis in general.

Traditionally, Meta has removed posts that attack individuals based on protected characteristics such as race, nationality, or religion. However, political affiliations have not fallen under this protected class. Meta has observed that the term is increasingly being used as a stand-in for Jewish or Israeli people more broadly than just referring to the national movement of the Jewish people for independence.

BREAKING @Meta will ban the use of the term 'Zionist' as an antisemitic proxy for 'Jews'.

The announcement is a much-needed advancement in our ongoing fight against online antisemitism and hatred.

By recognizing and addressing the misuse of the term 'Zionist,' Meta is…

— World Jewish Congress (@WorldJewishCong) July 9, 2024

In a blog post on Tuesday, Meta clarified its new stance: "We will remove content attacking 'Zionists' when it is not explicitly about the political movement, but instead uses antisemitic stereotypes, or threatens other types of harm through intimidation, or violence directed against Jews or Israelis under the guise of attacking Zionists."

Previously, Meta only considered the word "Zionism" as a proxy for Jewish people in very specific cases, such as when Zionists were compared to rats. The updated policy expands the scope of potential violations to include phrases where "Jew" or "Israeli" are not explicitly mentioned.

Neil Potts, vice president of public policy for Meta, revealed that the company has been formally reviewing the use of "Zionists" on its platforms over the past several months. However, discussions on how to effectively moderate the term have been ongoing for the past three years. During this time, Potts and his colleagues have consulted with 145 stakeholders, including academics and civil rights experts from around the world, to help shape the new policy.

In an effort to further refine its approach, Meta has requested input from its external Oversight Board on how to handle comparisons between Zionists and criminals, such as statements like "Zionists are war criminals."

This policy update comes nine months after the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, which resulted in over a thousand deaths and hundreds of hostages. Since the onset of the conflict, Meta has implemented several policy changes aimed at reducing the spread of violent content related to the attack and curbing expressions of support for Hamas, which is classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union.

The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), an organization that has been working with the Meta Policy Forum on this and similar issues, has praised the decision.

Sacha Roytman Dratwa, CEO of CAM, expressed support for the policy change saying, "We applaud this decision taken by Meta's Policy Forum, and the understanding that appropriating the term 'Zionists' to hide blatant Jew hatred has no place on their platforms." Dratwa added, "This is an important first step towards ending the immunity and impunity for antisemites online."

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Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced Tuesday it will lift its comprehensive ban on the word "shaheed" (martyr). The decision comes after a year-long review by its oversight board, which found the company's approach to be "overbroad," according to Reuters.

The social media conglomerate has faced criticism regarding its handling of content related to the Middle East. A 2021 study commissioned by Meta itself revealed that its approach had an "adverse human rights impact" on Arabic-speaking users of its services.

The oversight board, which operates independently despite being funded by Meta, initiated its review last year. The word "shaheed" was responsible for more content removals on the company's platforms than any other single word or phrase.

The term has varied meanings, generally referring to someone who has died for their religious beliefs or a cause. In the context of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, however, it is used to describe terrorists who have carried out attacks against Israelis or Jews.

In March, the review concluded that Meta's rules on "shaheed" failed to account for the word's diverse meanings, resulting in the removal of content not intended to praise violent actions.

Meta acknowledged the findings of the review on Tuesday and said its tests showed that removing content when "shaheed" was "paired with otherwise violating content ​​captures the most potentially harmful content without disproportionally impacting the voice".

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Most of us seem to be unaware of just how much data we post on social media gets collected, stored, and analyzed by software and specialists and ultimately used on us. Sometimes, this is in the form of ads and various marketing tactics; in other cases, it is used as a means for behavioral and psychological analysis. 

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The easiness at which digital data from young users can be collected has recently come to light in two court lawsuits that were submitted, with Meta and Twitter on one side and Bright Data – an Israeli company for data collection that is active on the global market – on the other side. 

The lawsuits and countersuit deal with whether privacy concerns were not fully addressed. Bright Data – whose clients include various United Nations agencies, international NGOs, and governments – is one of the companies that knows how to use the data we share on social media. Meta was also in this business, until recently.

In January 2023, Meta asked Bright Data to stop scraping data from its platforms, noting that it was repeatedly being fined by the EU for violating privacy laws. When Bright Data refused, Meta decided to sue the company, ostensibly over trade issues but implicitly over alleged privacy violations for its users. According to the lawsuit, as early as April 2021, Bright Data was running an operation for scraping data from various Meta-owned platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, allegedly circumventing the terms of service. 

Moreover, Meta said that the Israel company put on sale databases it collected from the various sites and platforms and that it was selling its technology to third parties so that they, too, could scrape data from Meta platforms and thus circumvent the various restrictions that have been placed to protect users' privacy. 

Video: Musk speaks on changes at Twitter / Reuters

X, formerly known as Twitter, also sued Bright Data, claiming that the business intelligence  "scrapes and sells millions of records from X Corp.'s X platform, in blatant violation of X Corp.'s Terms of Service, by which Bright Data is bound" and that it "induces and facilitates other X users to violate their own agreements with X Corp. by selling automated data-scraping tools and services that specifically target a wide range of X Corp. data."

Bright Data countersued. In a conversation with Israel Hayom, the company said the following: 

"Twitter and Meta are attempting to block public information on the web, which is freely accessible and does not sit behind a log in. Scraping public data is legal, important for humanity, and is crucial to all business operations that exist on the web. Its legality has been reaffirmed by courts that it is part of the public domain, which is why the lawsuit is over breach of contract. It is important to take note that if Bright Data did not have a business profile page on those platforms, there would be no lawsuits."

It also added the following explanation of how events unfolded: 

"The beginning of the affair in January of this year, when the company Meta contacted Bright Data demanding that it stop harvesting data from its platforms, this against the background of the repeated fines of the European Union against it for violating the privacy laws of the citizens of the Union. " This makes it sound like Bright Data was fined.

"Meta decided to sue the company, allegedly due to commercial issues but also due to the violation of the privacy of its users." -The lawsuit is clear, this has nothing to do with the privacy of the users. The lawsuit is not based on the privacy of users so this is factually incorrect."

Meanwhile, class action was initiated against the company in Israel, alleging that it was scraping users' data and selling it. It claims that this includes minors. Attorney Lior Lahav, who represents some of the Israeli plaintiffs, told Israel Hayom that Bright Data's actions have been made possible in part because of lacking consumer protection regulation in Israel. 

According to Lahav, the "regulators in Israel largely shy away from action, and this is very clear. They do not manage the whole issue of data protection and do not impose fines on companies that violate the law. The truth of the matter is that we lag behind the rest of the world by a sizeable margin. Just look at the fines on Google and Facebook in Europe on a monthly basis. Regulation in Israel hasn't really been successful in protecting citizens." 

Youths, who share almost everything on social media, suffer greatly from privacy violations. This realization has led to strict demands when it comes to collecting data and to the introduction of guardrails online. Governments and businesses have begun requiring social media to set strict age restrictions for entering their platforms. 

Dr. Liraz Margalit is a social psychologist who specializes in behavioral design and decision making in the digital age. She is also a witness on behalf of the plaintiffs. She says that "because of the effects of the social media, we don't even think about who is looking at our information or what that person does with it later. We just seek gratification from sharing it, and it makes us feel special."

She added, "This is a very big danger. Parents share information on their children from when they are about three years old. They not only let companies such as Bright Data collect information on them, they also make it easier for hackers to steal their identity. This is perhaps an extreme scenario, but today we can learn things about people as soon as they are born. Moreover, we have to take into account that for most people, the brain is fully developed only at 25, and therefore until then, young people can be much more easily exposed to outside influence from marketers and advertisers, as well as news and current events. Collecting information on young users brings us to a situation in which we have the real danger of shaping the children's personalities by corporations, trading companies, and even hostile entities."

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Meta Platforms on Wednesday launched a direct challenge to Twitter with Threads, garnering millions of users in hours as it sought to take advantage of its rival's much-weakened state after a series of chaotic decisions from owner Elon Musk.

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Those quick to join the new platform included celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Lopez as well as prominent politicians such as Democratic US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

"Let's do this. Welcome to Threads," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in his first post on the app, along with a fire emoji. He said the app logged 10 million sign-ups in seven hours.

He also took to Twitter, posting a well-known meme of Spiderman facing off against Spiderman - in a humorous jab at the rivalry with Musk and between the two services.

Analysts have said Threads' ties to Instagram might give it a built-in user base and advertising apparatus. That could siphon ad dollars from Twitter at a time when its new CEO is trying to revive its struggling business.

While Threads launched as a standalone app, users can log in using their Instagram credentials and follow the same accounts, potentially making it an easy addition to existing habits for Instagram's more than 2 billion monthly active users.

"Investors can't help but be a little excited about the prospect that Meta really has a 'Twitter-Killer'," said Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at investment firm AJ Bell.

Much like Twitter, the app features short text posts that users can like, re-post, and reply to, although it does not include any direct message capabilities. Posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos, and videos up to five minutes long, according to a Meta blog post.

Zuckerberg noted the challenges that big public social media forums bring. "I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn't nailed it. Hopefully, we will," he wrote.

The integration with Instagram included several nods to privacy considerations. Instagram users who sign up for Threads automatically have a badge affixed to their Instagram profile, but can opt to hide it. They also are given options to choose different privacy settings for each app.

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A Facebook group called Israelis and Palestinians for Peace aims to bring its thousands of members closer together through online dialogue.

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The group is unique in that it encourages users to participate in real-time discussions with others through its regular Zoom meetings

"The problem is we don't have decision makers who can make brave decisions," an unnamed Palestinian member explained.

"So we started the first step to create a new generation away from politics."

Founder Mori Sela, the founder of the group, spoke with i24NEWS on how Israelis and Palestinians for Peace works.

"On Facebook, we have about 4,000 people, 3,000 of them are very active every month," Sela said.

He collaborates with a team of activists who review the group and ensure discussions remain civil.

"We did have quite a few people that we had to block or mute for a while until they learn what the language in this group is," the founder explained.

"We sometimes call them when they make some comments that [are] not respectful or has some violence," Warda Sada, the group's co-director added.

"It's a challenge," she said, "to have Palestinians from (Gaza), from the West Bank, from all over the world… speak about their narratives, and to listen to the Israeli narratives too."

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

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A US class-action complaint, filed in California on Monday by law firms Edelson PC and Fields PLLC, argues that the company's failures to police content and its platform's design contributed to real-world violence faced by the Rohingya community. In a coordinated action, British lawyers also submitted a letter of notice to Facebook's London office.

Facebook has said it was "too slow to prevent misinformation and hate" in Myanmar and has said it has since taken steps to crack down on platform abuses in the region, including banning the military from Facebook and Instagram after the Feb. 1 coup.

Facebook has said it is protected from liability over content posted by users by a US internet law known as Section 230, which holds that online platforms are not liable for content posted by third parties. The complaint says it seeks to apply Burmese law to the claims if Section 230 is raised as a defense.

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Palestinian activists contended that Facebook and other social media platforms have censored criticism of Israel in response to government pressure and launched a campaign seeking to halt the activity.

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Palestinians have complained that political posts were removed or demoted especially by Facebook and Instagram, which Facebook owns.

The "7amleh" digital rights organization launched a website called "7or" on Monday to call attention to its position, saying it has documented 746 rights violations in 2021 so far.

"We see it as a war on the Palestinian narrative, as an attempt to silence them speaking about their oppression and suffering," said 7amleh founder Nadim Nashif.

Facebook responded to a request for comment by referring to the work of its independent Oversight Board. The board called in September for moderation of Arabic and Hebrew content to be reviewed for potential bias. The company said it would implement recommendations from that review.

During a May war between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz urged Facebook executives to be more proactive in removing content from "extremists elements that are seeking to do damage to our country."

Internal Facebook documents seen by Reuters showed that staff members expressed concern over the demotion of posts by Palestinian activist and writer Mohammed El-Kurd.

El-Kurd said views of his posts on Instagram, where he has 744,000 followers, decreased dramatically during Palestinian protests in May over the ongoing property dispute surrounding the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

"I have suspected this baseless silencing of my account for a long time," El-Kurd said. "The Israeli government is clearly threatened by Palestinian voices."

Social media user Tala Ghannam said her posts have been removed from Facebook and Instagram for violating community guidelines, especially those tagged "#SaveSheikhJarrah."

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Like many companies in trouble before it, Facebook is changing its name and logo.

Facebook Inc. is now called Meta Platforms Inc., or Meta for short, to reflect what CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday is its commitment to developing the new surround-yourself technology known as the "metaverse." But the social network itself will still be called Facebook.

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Also unchanged, at least for now, are its chief executive and senior leadership, its corporate structure and the crisis that has enveloped the company.

Skeptics immediately accused the company of trying to change the subject from the Facebook Papers, the trove of leaked documents that have plunged it into the biggest crisis since it was founded in Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room 17 years ago. The documents portray Facebook as putting profits ahead of ridding its platform of hate, political strife and misinformation around the world.

The move reminded marketing consultant Laura Ries of when energy company BP rebranded itself to "Beyond Petroleum" to escape criticism that the oil giant harmed the environment.

"Facebook is the world's social media platform, and they are being accused of creating something that is harmful to people and society," she said. "They can't walk away from the social network with a new corporate name and talk of a future metaverse."

Facebook the app is not changing its name. Nor are Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. The company's corporate structure also won't change. But on Dec. 1, its stock will start trading under a new ticker symbol, MVRS.

The metaverse is sort of the internet brought to life, or at least rendered in 3D. Zuckerberg has described it as a "virtual environment" you can go inside of, instead of just looking at on a screen. People can meet, work and play, using virtual reality headsets, augmented reality glasses, smartphone apps or other devices.

It also will incorporate other aspects of online life such as shopping and social media, according to Victoria Petrock, an analyst who follows emerging technologies.

Zuckerberg's foray into virtual reality has drawn some comparisons to fellow tech billionaires' outer space adventures and jokes that perhaps it's understandable he would want to escape his current reality amid calls for his resignation and increasing scrutiny of the company.

On Monday, Zuckerberg announced a new segment for Facebook that will begin reporting its financial results separately from the company's Family of Apps segment starting in the final quarter of this year. The entity, Reality Labs, will reduce Facebook's overall operating profit by about $10 billion this year, the company said.

Other tech companies such as Microsoft, chipmaker Nvidia and Fortnite maker Epic Games have all been outlining their own visions of how the metaverse will work.

Zuckerberg said that he expects the metaverse to reach a billion people within the next decade and that he hopes the new technology will creates millions of jobs for creators.

The announcement comes amid heightened legislative and regulatory scrutiny of Facebook in many parts of the world because of the Facebook Papers. A corporate rebranding isn't likely to solve the myriad problems revealed by the internal documents or quiet the alarms that critics have been raising for years about the harm the company's products are causing to society.

Zuckerberg, for his part, has largely dismissed the furor triggered by the Facebook Papers as unfair.

In an interesting twist, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the philanthropic organization run by Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, bought a Canadian scientific literature analysis company called Meta in 2017.

By Thursday afternoon, though, its website Meta.org announced that it will "sunset" at the end of March. The Meta.com domain, meanwhile, redirected to the former Facebook's rebranded corporate site.

At headquarters in Menlo Park, California, the iconic thumbs-up sign that has long been outside was repainted to a blue, pretzel-shape logo resembling an infinity symbol.

Some of Facebook's biggest critics seemed unimpressed by the name change. The Real Facebook Oversight Board, a watchdog group focused on the company, announced that it will keep its name.

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"Changing their name doesn't change reality: Facebook is destroying our democracy and is the world's leading peddler of disinformation and hate," the group said in a statement. "Their meaningless name change should not distract from the investigation, regulation and real, independent oversight needed to hold Facebook accountable."

In explaining the rebrand, Zuckerberg said the name Facebook no longer encompasses everything the company does. In addition to the social network, that now includes Instagram, Messenger, its Quest VR headset, its Horizon VR platform and more.

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A lot has been said about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his view on Judaism throughout the years, but a recent interview with his wife, Priscilla Chan, sheds light on the traditions they keep, including a weekly Shabbat family dinner. 

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Speaking to The Sunday Times, Chan said that she and Zuckerberg raise their two daughters, five-year-old Maxima and four-year-old August, as Jewish. Every Friday night the family hosts friends for Friday night dinner in which Chan – who is Chinese by heritage – serves kosher food alongside Asian dishes. 

She also described the family's bedtime ritual, which involves Zuckerberg reciting a Jewish prayer with the two daughters in Mandarin and teaching them how to code despite their young age. Asked if they plan to give the daughters access to social media, Chan is very clear: "Not until they are 13, because that's the rule."

In her interview, Chan also shared how she met Zuckerberg while studying at Harvard and their diverging backgrounds. While Zuckerberg grew up in a middle-class Jewish family in upstate New York, her parents fled Vietnam in the 1970s and worked multiple jobs to make ends meet.

Chan also spoke of the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation she and her husband set up through which they plan to donate 99% of their wealth.

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