"Online antisemitism is lowering the threshold for real-world hostility toward Jews."
WASHINGTON – CyberWell, a trusted partner of Meta (Facebook, Instagram and Threads), TikTok and YouTube, has helped platforms make significant progress in enforcing their policies against antisemitism since its founding in 2022. Average removal rates for reported antisemitic content have more than doubled, from approximately 20 percent in 2022 to more than 50 percent today, CyberWell CEO & Founder Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor told the Jewish Federations of North America's General Assembly this week.
Speaking during Antisemitism, Amplified, a panel examining technology's role in spreading antisemitism, Cohen Montemayor joined Center for Countering Digital Harm CEO Imran Ahmed and Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod to discuss how technology companies can strengthen content moderation through specialized research, real-time alerts and AI solutions while tackling challenges posed by algorithmic amplification and AI-generated antisemitism.
“Social media platforms and specific engagement algorithms breathe new life and new color into age-old antisemitic beliefs and antisemitic biases,” Cohen Montemayor said.
She pointed to CyberWell's research documenting how AI-generated antisemitic content, including viral trends presented as humor, reinforces longstanding conspiracies about Jews and can fuel real-world harassment.
“What happens online does not stay online. It goes offline. Antisemitism on social media is lowering the threshold of what is tolerable and acceptable behavior towards Jews in the real world,” she said.
Cohen Montemayor explained that CyberWell works directly with social media platforms, providing data, real-time alerts and AI solutions to help platforms enforce their policies more accurately and effectively at scale. In a separate CyberWell study on AI-generated antisemitism, removal rates exceeded 67 percent.
However, she emphasized that removing individual posts is insufficient without addressing the systems that promote inflammatory content.
“As Americans, we are forced to wrestle with the concept that freedom of speech and algorithmically charged speech are not the same thing,” she said. “When it comes to moderating antisemitism online, people intuitively say it is a freedom of speech issue. These are private platforms, private companies with very, very powerful incentive structures driven by algorithms. The constitutionally protected right does not guarantee the right to reach millions of people with inciteful posts.”
Calling for greater transparency around recommendation algorithms and platform enforcement, Cohen Montemayor urged Jewish organizations to come together to prioritize digital literacy and technology accountability.
“Every single Jewish leader has to make tech accountability, digital literacy and specifically the issue of digital antisemitism part of their strategy to combat antisemitism and part of their advocacy efforts at the local, state and federal level,” she said.
CyberWell is an independent, tech-based nonprofit combating the spread of antisemitism online, operating globally. Its AI-powered technologies monitor social media in English and Arabic for content promoting antisemitism, Holocaust denial and incitement to violence against Jews and their allies based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. Its analysts review and report this content to platform moderators and index verified posts in the first-ever open database of antisemitic social media posts, cataloging it openly for transparency at app.cyberwell.org. Through partnerships, education and real-time alerts, CyberWell partners with social media platforms and digital service companies to help them enforce their policies more effectively, promoting proactive steps against online Jew-hate. For more information, visit: cyberwell.org.
