Pixabay – Facebook has come under fire from an Israeli minister
Facebook has called on users to report content that promotes violence after the website was attacked by an Israeli minister at the weekend over material posted by the alleged killer of a 13-year-old girl in a West Bank settlement.
Israel’s Public Security minister Gilad Erdan said at the weekend that the social media site had become a “monster” due to “the dialogue, the incitement, the lies of the young Palestinian generation [that] are happening on the Facebook platform”.
Erdan accused Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, of having blood on his hands after the girl was stabbed to death in the settlement of Kiryat Ara. The alleged killer, identified as Muhammad Nasser Tarayrah, 17, posted a series of messages on the site, saying he wanted a “martyr’s death”.
In a statement, Facebook said it endeavours to “work regularly with safety organisations and policy-makers around the world, including Israel, to ensure that people know how to make safe use of Facebook”.
The statement goes on: “There is no room for content that promotes violence, direct threats, terrorist or hate speeches on our platform. We have a set of community standards designed to help people understand what’s allowed on Facebook, and we call on people to use our report if they find content they believe violates these rules, so that we can examine each case and take quick action.”
According to Reuters, the minister had told the Israeli TV station Channel 2 in Hebrew: “Facebook today, which brought an amazing, positive revolution to the world, sadly, we see this since the rise of Daesh and the wave of terror, it has simply become a monster. Facebook today sabotages, it should be known, sabotages the work of the Israeli police, because when the Israeli police approach them, and it is regarding a resident of Judea and Samaria, Facebook does not cooperate.”
Erdan also said that the site “sets a very high bar for removing inciteful content and posts” and called on people to “flood [Zuckerberg] in every possible place with the demand to monitor the platform he established and from which he earns millions”.
He pointed out that of the 74 “especially inciting and extremist posts” of which Israel had notified Facebook, only 24 were removed.
