SYDNEY – Earlier this week, CyberWell Founder and CEO Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor warned Australia’s Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion that social media platforms continue to struggle to detect and remove evolving forms of antisemitism as online hate shifts beyond traditional Holocaust denial to coded language, conspiracy theories and AI-generated content.
Appearing before the Royal Commission’s hearing on social media and online hate, Cohen Montemayor urged technology companies to build dedicated antisemitism datasets and work with expert organizations to improve detection of emerging forms of antisemitism.
CyberWell’s research, presented in an expert report commissioned by Australia’s Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, demonstrated the growing dangers posed by AI-generated antisemitic content. According to the organization’s findings, AI-generated antisemitic posts were approximately twice as likely to justify or encourage violence as user-generated antisemitic content. The organization analyzed hundreds of AI-generated antisemitic posts which were viewed more than 30 million times across major social media platforms.
Cohen Montemayor testified that while major platforms have become more effective at removing explicit Holocaust denial, they continue to struggle identifying newer forms of coded antisemitism, including mockery of survivors of the Holocaust and victims of hate-fueled violence, underscoring the need for more sophisticated categorization and AI training.
“The challenge that all digital platforms, including social media companies face, is not one of comprehensive policy, it’s a challenge of scalable enforcement of their own rules,” said Cohen Montemayor. “As antisemitism evolves, platforms must evolve with it. Without dedicated datasets that distinguish between different forms of antisemitism and other targeted hate speech, companies cannot accurately measure the problem, understand how algorithms amplify it or train AI systems to detect it.”
Cohen Montemayor also warned the Commission that children are being exposed to antisemitic propaganda disguised as popular cartoon content. She cited examples of antisemitic memes using My Little Pony imagery to normalize Holocaust denial and antisemitic narratives among young audiences.
“You’re priming them [children] to also see the Holocaust and the story of the Holocaust through the lens of denial,” Cohen Montemayor told the Commission.
She testified that even when original content complies with platform policies, comment sections often become hotbeds of antisemitic abuse.
“The Wild West of content moderation is the comments section,” Cohen Montemayor testified, warning that antisemitic abuse often flourishes in replies beneath otherwise compliant or even neutral content.
Cohen Montemayor urged social media platforms to develop specialized datasets categorizing contemporary forms of antisemitism, increase transparency around enforcement, strengthen moderation of comment sections and invest in partnerships with trusted organizations possessing linguistic, cultural and subject-matter expertise. She also highlighted the growing use of coded language, memes and euphemisms designed to evade automated moderation despite violating platform policies.
“All tech platforms with content moderation needs are exploring how this work can be optimized and automated further with AI technology” Cohen Montemayor said. “Building AI moderation systems meant to tackle nuanced and specific forms of hate speech and harassment on a global scale without the input of experts in emerging hate narratives is an oversight that will yield poorer results of an already exhausted and underfunded Trust & Safety eco-system.”
CyberWell is an independent, tech-based nonprofit combating the spread of antisemitism online, operating globally. Its AI-technologies monitor social media in English and Arabic for content containing 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 while indexing all 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: https://cyberwell.org/.
