Facebook’s Israel policy head says platform takes antisemitism seriously
Facebook takes the war on antisemitism very seriously, Jordana Cutler, Facebook’s head of policy for Israel and the Jewish Diaspora, told The Jerusalem Post Annual Conference.
Cutler, who was included in the The Jerusalem Post’s list of the 50 most influential Jews in the world, is at the forefront of the social media giant’s efforts to control incitement and hate speech online.“My job is to be a representative in Israel for Facebook, and to speak at Facebook on behalf of Israel and the Jewish Diaspora,” she said.
Does Facebook listen? “Of course they do, and that’s one of the most exciting aspects of my job,” Cutler said.
In one example, Cutler noted a recent amendment to Facebook’s community standards to ban implicit hate speech, meaning that in addition to forbidding a statement that a particular race is inferior, you also can’t claim that a race is superior, or runs the world, banks, or the government. This change was the direct result of Cutler’s findings in her meetings with Jewish community
leaders, she said.
Cutler noted that Facebook’s speech detection algorithms are always improving, and said that in the recent quarter, 85%
of hate speech was automatically removed before it was reported by a user. That being said, she noted that “people don’t realize how much power
they have to report content on Facebook.”
“Just one user report can bring down a violating post,” she added.