Press Release | CyberWell Study Unpacks the Newest Iteration of Online Antisemitism

CYBERWELL STUDY UNPACKS THE NEWEST ITERATION OF ONLINE ANTISEMITISM – DENYING HAMAS OCT. 7 ATTACK ON ISRAEL HAPPENED

GROUP WARNS THAT OCT. 7^TH DENIAL IS NEW FORM OF HOLOCAUST DENIAL AND CALLS ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS TO TAKE ACTION

TEL AVIV –CyberWell, an innovative tech nonprofit focused on monitoring for and combatting the spread of antisemitism on social media said that a recent analysis of 910 potentially antisemitic posts to Facebook, Instagram YouTube and X reviewed in the last month alone included 313 that denied or distorted the Hamas attack on October 7. This content reached nearly 26 million viewers on all platforms.

Of the verified denial dataset more than 38 percent of content denied that Hamas militants and their allies raped Israelis during their attack, more than 36 percent claimed that Israel perpetrated or was directly responsible for the actions of Hamas militants. The remaining posts aligned with several varying sub-narratives, including that Israel profits from the massacre. These posts were engaged with (reacted to, commented on, shared/retweeted) more than 901,233 times.

The organization released the report now in advance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27 in order to draw attention to the latest iteration in Jew-hatred—denial with the purpose of spreading antisemitism. While the Holocaust and October 7^th are distinct historical events, today antisemites with algorithmically enhanced social media platforms exploit denial as a form of delegitimizing Jewish victimhood and spreading anti-Jewish hate in mainstream opinion.

“The morning of October 7, Hamas militants sadistically recorded and, in some cases, even live-streamed their heinous attack to social media,” said CyberWell Founder and Executive Director Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor. “Caught by surprise, these platforms rapidly became weapons of mass psychological terror during the attack, and once the true scope of terror was realized are now being used by Hamas supporters to deny and distort the attack.

“While all mainstream social media platforms have community standards policies prohibiting the denial of violent events, which has been extended in practice to include Holocaust denial, these companies have yet to apply this policy to the denial of the events of October 7, the largest violent atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust. This is a policy gap and we are calling on all social media platforms to proactively make the change to their policies to effectively stop the spread of hate and protect Jewish users online,” she added.

CyberWell uses AI technology to monitor for posts in English and Arabic that violate the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which the organization’s analysts then report to platform moderators alongside the community standards and hate speech policies the post violates. When posts meet antisemitic guidelines that fall outside of established policies, CyberWell releases contextualized guidance to social media companies so that they can better moderate the content on their platforms.

While no specific IHRA definition example directly relates to a mass atrocity against Jews after the Holocaust, CyberWell did rely on two examples in the IHRA definition as a framework by which to identify October 7 denial. These include:

• “Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust)”.
• “Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust”.

While many social media platforms did release special community standards policies in the wake of the Hamas attack and the increased number of actioned posts related to it that reached their platforms, these policies have failed to serve as clear policies for content moderators, which led to confusion surrounding established policies that have been violated in countless posts. Most notably Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube all either directly or indirectly have community standards policies surrounding the denial of violent events or mocking victims of violent events is prohibited by all platforms.

CyberWell’s report can be found at: https://cyberwell.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Denial-of-October-7-Social-Media-Trend-Alert-CyberWell.pdf

CyberWell is an international technology non-profit combatting online antisemitism by monitoring, reporting and holding social media platforms accountable for hate speech promulgated through their websites and apps. CyberWell’s AI technology monitors for posts, currently in English and Arabic, that are consistent with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which the organization then reports to moderators alongside the platform-prescribed policies it violates. By understanding and leveraging how social media companies operate, CyberWell has achieved incredible success rates in removing Jew-hatred at scale, sparking policy guidance for content moderators and updating social media policy to account for all forms of antisemitism.

CyberWell indexes all verified posts in the first-ever open database of antisemitic social media posts – democratically cataloging it for transparency. Through partnerships, education, and real-time alerts, CyberWell is influencing social media platforms to take proactive steps against online Jew-hate. For more information, visit: https://cyberwell.org/.