A Facebook employee sent an unusual email to an unknown outsider on November 10, with the aim of host a talk about Facebook’s policy on anti-Semitism Israeli. In the letter you can read that Facebook is in the process of analyzing how it should interpret the attacks against Zionists.
That email has caused the intervention of certain corners of the left due to their anger. Since last Tuesday, activists have launched a petition asking the platform to stop any big changes to the way Facebook moderates the word ‘Zionist’.
Both parties agree that the term is routinely used as part of racist rhetoric in hate speech and should therefore be removed. The term is also used by Jewish critics of specific Israeli policies, especially the country’s settlement policy. If this term is classified as hate speech, criticism would end up stifling, at least on Facebook.
The petition, organized by the progressive group Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP), got more than 20,000 signaturesincluding activists like Peter Gabriel, Wallace Shawn and Michael Chabon. “We’re deeply concerneds for Facebook’s proposed revision of its hate speech policy to consider ‘Zionist’ as a substitute for ‘Jew’, ”the petition states.
Facebook denies plans to reclassify term
Facebook denied that there are plans to reclassify this term in its hate speech policy. Even so, the company did not question the authenticity of the email or deny that the classification of this term was under review.
Under our current policies, we allow the term ‘Zionist’ in political discourse, but we remove it when it is used as a substitute for Jews or Israelis in a dehumanizing or violent way. As we do with all of our policies on a regular basis, we engage independently with experts and stakeholders to ensure this policy is in the right place, but this does not mean that we change our policy.
A Facebook spokesperson
JVP views the email from Facebook, which suspended Trump’s account, as part of a much larger campaign that has as aim to change the way the platform deals with criticism of Israeli government policy. Rabbi Alissa Wise, deputy director of JVP, stated that the proposed change in Facebook’s policy would only prevent its users from being able to hold the Israeli government responsible for harming the Palestinian people.
Social media should allow people to hold our governments accountable to us
Alissa Wise
Via: The Verge
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