Leaked data reveals Israeli govt campaign to remove pro-Palestine posts on Meta

> without repercussions

This part is not settled yet.

This exactly right here ^

But discussions on the internet seems to be with lots of people who have only a shallow understanding of the balances involved and low historical context

Ehh, I’ve got not particular stake in this conflict so it’s really interesting to see how each side is using propaganda and how obvious the propaganda is when you’re not emotionally invested.

Each side is using different tactics to fit the strength of their positions and how well various messages resonate. “They are the same anyway” is useful for a side who wants people to be inactive, it’s not some universal benefit to both parties. Instead each side wants different people to be engaged vs apathetic, which hardly unusual.

> But if this is all we settle for we’re like dogs fighting for scraps.

Who is settling for this? It's just one battle when multiple battles occur at the same time and we don't stop fighting.

Are you saying too much is being focused on this issue? I think it's something that if we don't do that then it will only get worse.

No. I speak out, and I don't feel safe. It takes courage.

It stopped being safe in the USA for anyone not currently popular with the administration. And anyone’s safe status can change on a whim.

> It currently dwarfs the number incarcerated by the Soviet Union during the 1930s.

Not really. Estimates for the number of people in labor camps, labor colonies and prisons are all over the place, but based on their own fragmented records reached about 2 million by the end of 1938. That doesn't count pretrial/administrative detentions or the hundreds of thousands that were simply executed that year or all the people exiled to inhospitable settlements. And of course, the mortality rate in their penal system was extremely high.

> In the Southeast United States, incarceration rate of the Black population is 7%

Nowhere in the US is there anywhere close to incarcerating 7% of the black population.

That said, the US incarceration rate is ridiculously high and we should be ashamed of it.

> It currently dwarfs the number incarcerated by the Soviet Union during the 1930s

That was certainly false if you look at the late 40s (not by much, only 2x or so though..)

However if you actually think (since you post nonsensical “statistics” that’s unlikely) about it the mortality rates in soviet concentration camps were massive, especially in the 1930s or during the war which significantly decreased the incarceration rate.

Can’t have a huge prison population if you just murder or starve everyone to death..

>We should wait for all the facts to come out.

Oh? Before they deport him? If the courts didn't intervene, initiated from his side, he would be gone

> We should wait for all the facts to come out.

Like indefinitely? Trump’s administration is ignoring the courts and there is no real oversight. Also whatever facts come out they will be drowned by all the other insane idiocy that the US government is doing so nobody will pay attention anyway..

When they start sending US citizens to El Salvador nobody is going to care about some guy whose green card got revoked.

This is part of the trick that israel is trying to pull. Suppose you support Palestine liberation from Israel's violent occupation and apartheid, as does most of the world. Well, so does Hamas, so therefore you support Hamas' goals and are evil and a terrorist.

To apply this in another context, I agree with Trump on very little, but I do agree that Daylight Savings should be gotten rid of. So am I pro-Trump? No, that's absurd.

Or if you are right wing in the US and believe that the US is the land of the free and home of the brave, well, so does Hilary Clinton. Are you pro-Clinton?

The connection is absurd, but it parrotted daily by US politicians and US media.

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> No, the US government is deporting people for supporting terrorist organizations,

Has it deported anyone voicing support for the Israeli Defense Forces or any of the other Jewish supremacist terrorist organizations currently terrorizing Palestinians? Regardless, your claim that Khalil would have offered material support or even voiced support for a terrorist organization is baseless. Not that it matters either because saying "I love Hamas" is free speech and covered under the First Amendment.

Öztürk had her visa secretly revoked because she coauthored an oped suggesting her college divest from Israel. She did not write an op-ed supporting a terrorist group.

> Equating Russia and the US is an extreme take.

Perhaps currently. How long do you think we should wait until we can start doing that? At the current pace probably a year or two?

I mean.. Putin wasn’t that bad in the early 2000s, nazis or fascists weren’t that awful in the 20s or 30s either (in relative terms compared to everyone else at the time) either. Waiting until its too late do change anything is maybe not the smartest thing, though..

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And here is an analysis of BBC's anti-Israeli bias: https://asserson.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/asserson-r...

And from the BBC itself: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2d4egk17l2o "Questions still remain for BBC after damaging Gaza documentary"

https://www.ynetnews.com/culture/article/skcfkb1iyx "From bias to blunders: The BBC’s anti-Israel shift since October 7"

Just endless conspiracies. Which newsroom leaders get their money from what places? Why do leaders in government and business hate journalists so much and invest so much in discrediting them?

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Just rumors and conspiracy theories.

Where can we see evidence of what you claim?

What do you claim Kahn has done? Do you have evidence? The NY Times regulary publishes news critical of Israel.

Children and parents, siblings, etc. disagree, sometimes extremely, regularly. Children and parents disagreeing is one of the most common stories in humanity. Should Joe resign because of dad's activities?

Worth considering if this is what you voted for. Was the moment of pique worth it?

>This is a conspiracy theory

Doesn't meet the criteria of what people typically call a conspiracy theory. It's easily verified or debunked by amateurs with publicly available information, it doesn't seem absurd on its face, and it makes no claims other than those of association (certainly none of blatant felony, coup, or world domination).

Chris Krebs just yesterday had his security clearance revoked solely for saying the 2020 election was fair and not rigged.

His coworkers at SentinelOne (almost certainly most of who are citizens) also had their clearances revoked, despite never speaking out on the topic, purely as a North Korea style "punish the whole family" approach to strike fear into people of guilt by association, so that those who have spoken out in any shape or form become social pariahs.

Citizens having their career taken away for saying an election wasn't rigged, or for happening to work at the same place as someone who said this.

If you think the status quo hasn't yet changed to "In countries like China, Russia and the US, speaking out against the government puts both your livelihood and that of those in your vicinity at serious risk", you're dead wrong.

It doesn't matter if they're citizens or not if the government is skipping court thus not being required to prove it either way. Then when they oopsie you to another country they have to at least try to pretend to get you back but the courts need to show "deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs".

Which is a long way of saying the executive can blackhole anyone it wants to a foreign country and no one is going to do anything because god forbid we step on the executive's role to give up people in our country to other countries.

Yes but that was after the American people voted for an administration which explicitly ran on a platform of "we will do exactly that".

The attempted framing is as government oppression by "the elites", but half the country - the regular people - they're all for this.

Not great but still better than defenestration I guess.

I've seen a few news articles on arrests and the headlines are attention grabbing "Ivy League Student arrested for protesting" and it's worrisome to see.

However then buried in the article is something like they overstayed their visa, etc. Take a sibling comment's link to an article with a "second student arrested" in the title. As in that seems like there isn't a "large number". This is nothing like the reports of arrests in Russia. Especially as some of these pro-Palestinian protestors advocate violence or intifada pretty freely. I've seen that with my own eyes.

If I were a foreign national protesting and advocating for violence against any other country or people group I'd expect to be denied a visa or possibly deported for participating in such events. It'd be arrogant not to expect that outcome IMHO.

Visa applications in European Union countries often include things such as "indicators of good civil behavior". Take the quotes from that sibling comment's linked BBC article:

> The DHS statement says that Ms Kordia had overstayed her student visa, which had been terminated in 2022 "for lack of attendance". It did not say whether she had been attending Columbia or another institution. > She had previously been arrested in April 2024 for taking part in protests at Columbia University, according to DHS. > "It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America," said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in a statement. > "When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country."

>I am in fact far more afraid of pro-palestine speech from USA as an immigrant than I was in my home country- and please trust me I am not exaggerating here.

I would have laughed at this until pretty recently. How wrong I was.

Do you mean pro-Palestinian sentiments scare you or are you afraid of expressing pro-Palestinian sentiment?

They've discussed deporting US citizens to gulags - https://truthout.org/articles/white-house-press-sec-says-tru...

He was detained at immigration. This happens all the time, and has been happening routinely since 2001.

(Not saying it's good or anything - just not new).

This Israeli as well, had everything taken from her for 4 IG posts:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/03/magazine/israel-free-spee...

> birthright citizens and full citizens

Is there a difference?

I think it's disgusting hypocrisy. We're talking about the USA, aren't we? A country that has started many, many wars, a country that massacred innocent Vietnamese, Afghans, Iraqis. Even at this very moment, the US is participating in the killing of honest, decent, innocent Palestinians and Russians. But that's okay, not worth mentioning.

But deporting lawful residents? How dare you, America? This is definitely the beginning of the end.

> Russian opposition

Do you mean the guy who died relatively recently in Russian prison? Or his colleague who was part of prisoner exchange

Most of Russian opposition does support this theory. Many people do, in general. It's hard to call it a conspiracy theory when they literally caught a couple of FSB guys loading bags of explosives into an apartment building. The official version is that this was a "security training", but c'mon.

Where do you think the servers that power TikTok in the United States are? Who do you think administers those servers?

At least for all the surveillance the Chinese do - the standard of life is improving overall. We don't even get that shit here in the US. Our life just gets worse by practically every measure as the years go on and we're taken advantage of on top of it.

I'd like to see that evidence too, hopefully for more than one instance/source.

IMO, it's been obvious that the danger seen in TikTok is that it's a propaganda tool out of USA's control. If it was really a national security danger, USA could simply ban it instead of fighting so hard to own it.

You don't have to look that hard—there have been several independent groups who have noted different ways in which the algorithm is skewed pro-CCP:

https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/NCRI-Report_-...

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/social-psychology/artic...

Where’s the proof? Facebook agreeing to take down some contents that violates its policies is hardly proof of anything.

Who is we?

Read the article again. According to the whistleblowers, governments in general get privileged access vs regular users and Israel gets privileged access vs other governments:

> Governments and organizations, on the other hand, have privileged channels to trigger content review. Reports submitted through these channels receive higher priority and are almost always reviewed by human moderators rather than AI. Once reviewed by humans, the reviews are fed back into Meta’s AI system to help it better assess similar content in the future. While everyday users can also file TDRs, they are rarely acted upon. Government-submitted TDRs are far more likely to result in content removal.

Meta has overwhelmingly complied with Israel’s requests, making an exception for the government account by taking down posts without human reviews, according to the whistleblowers, while still feeding that data back into Meta’s AI.

anecdotally Meta has pretty lax moderation against anti-palestinian in Hebrew, allowing tons of extremely racist/violent speech.

How do you feel about posts supporting the bombing of Dresden, Tokyo, or the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

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They're writing posts on Facebook, not dropping bomb on anyone. Relax.

Facebook is not the same there as it is here. It's not just a fun app you use, it's a huge part of how African and Asian countries interface with the internet. Trying to lead a group effort to leave the platform wouldn't work at any scale other than complete unanimity, and you're going to have trouble reaching that with the people benefiting from weaponizing Facebook.

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Stating that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist has been recognized to be an antisemitic statement by many prominent institutions.

It’s a radical statement that effectively denies the rights of millions of people to exist and is especially problematic given the historical context of the establishment of Israel.

The statement gets thrown around so much in certain circles that it’s gotten normalized. You’ve apparently lost sight of or never stopped to think what actually means, to the point where you’re providing it as an example of an innocent statement that got you banned for no reason. Taking this statement out of radical activist circles and into the real world won’t go well.

Take some time to educate yourself and reflect on what it actually means.

> it could be tricky for pro-palestinians because they can fall easily into the trap of using party slogans used by proscribed organisations

Any excuse is good when you have power and want to justify repression. For example they tried to claim that the slogan "from the river to the sea Palestine will be free" is genocidal. Quite a jump. (Meanwhile, the Likud's platform says "from the river to the sea there will be only Israel" but that's fine).

> if they were they would be guilty of an insurmountable number of war crimes

They killed much less civilians than the IDF did, and they are not invaders nor illegal occupiers of someone else's country. What is acceptable or unacceptable is decided by those who are in power, and they are currently protecting a country whose prime minister in charge is wanted for crimes against humanity.

> they can fall easily into the trap of using party slogans used by proscribed organisations.

It's taking it way to far to suppress speech - political speech, the most important speech - for slipping in the 'wrong' slogans.

> My understanding of Hamas is that they are not considered a legitimate army, but if they were they would be guilty of an insurmountable number of war crimes

While Hamas commits many horrors and is oppressive and awful, I don't think the ligitimate army argument holds water:

If Hamas acted like a legitimate army under the laws of war, they'd be massacred in an instant. It would require them to dress in uniforms so they can be identified, and only fight against the enemy's military. Hamas has some rifles and RPGs and a few rockets. Their enemy has tanks, fighter planes, etc etc etc. If Hamas wanted to be a legitimate army, their only option would be to immediately disband.

The laws of war seem written by large powers to protect their interests. There are legitimate 'freedom-fighting' insurgents out there who also are limited in their ability to be a 'legitimate army'.

> (not unlike the IDF as many would say). Showing support for such things is beyond reasonable accepted discourse in my home country.

So can people show support for either Israel (it's not the IDF, it's a political entity - Israel) or Hamas (also a political entity)? How do they talk about the war?

Hamas isn't an army, it's the political party voted into office to administer Gaza. The problem is a subset of it, the Al-Qassam Brigades, that conduct asymmetric warfare. If that were shutdown and violence were disavowed, that would give them political respect and would cease giving Palestinians a bad name that holds them back from the atrocities committed against them from being recognized.

> it can be effectively impossible for the accused to prove their innocence

Except in this case, the accused are the ones who have all the logs, all the records, all the database entries, etc. They are in fact in possession of the complete and perfect means to prove or disprove these allegations, and their choice not to use this data to defend themselves (i.e. by not showing that the posts were in fact harmful or inciting violence, etc) lends credence to the allegations.

... and you're absolutely right, innocent people had basically no recourse when Meta took down their content, or shadow-banned them etc on the claim that they were inciting violence, pro-terrorist, engaging in hate-speech etc. The accused cannot publicly point to their post which merely used a palestinian flag emoji, or mentioned an assassinated writer. The burden should have been much higher for Meta when casting such accusations about.

People are downvoting me, but the timing was really directly linked: https://www.instagram.com/p/DIMKETPNd5p/

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This feels like a dog whistle rather than providing something substantive.

The Israeli government also helped facilitate Qatar's support for Hamas[0], what's your point here?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas#Isra...

NGO Monitor - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGO_Monitor

From Wikipedia:

> NGO Monitor is a right-wing organization based in Jerusalem that reports on international NGO (non-governmental organisation) activity from a pro-Israel perspective

<wikipedia page goes in lot more detail>

I'll trust HRW on this one. No thanks.

They’re blowing up children. If I am against that, is that now a bad thing? This is how far we’ve fallen. We have a nation state committing a genocide of an indigenous people and the Human Rights Watch is accused of being biased against the genociders.

“I feel this organization is biased against the Nazi party” is essentially the same sentence.

If a human rights org were highly critical of Russia but not Ukraine, is that a bias as well?

Reality isn't politically neutral.

I cannot read your paywalled Atlantic link, but the other link is an account from an aggrieved ex-employee and should also be taken with a grain of salt.

Manipulating the free flow of speech is inherently wrong. They are demonstrably censoring pro Palestine content without any regard at all to pro Israel content, or even pro Israel content that incites or calls for violence

On 2, a few additional quotes from Wikipedia might help (they admittedly don’t directly implicate Guy Rosen, though you’d have to be extremely charitable in assuming he wasn’t party to these decisions):

“ Onavo, which allowed the company to read network traffic on a device prior to its being encrypted, thereby giving the company the ability "to measure detailed in-app activity" and to collect analytics on Snapchat app usage from devices on which Onavo was installed.[12] It did this by creating "fake digital certificates to impersonate trusted Snapchat, YouTube, and Amazon analytics servers to redirect and decrypt secure traffic from those apps for Facebook’s strategic analysis."[13] The program, which was named "Project Ghostbusters" in reference to Snapchat's ghost-shaped logo, was later expanded to include Amazon and YouTube”

“ On January 29, 2019, TechCrunch published a report detailing "Project Atlas"—an internal market research program employed by Facebook since 2016. It invited users between the ages of 13 and 35 to install the Facebook Research app—allegedly a rebranded version of Onavo Protect—on their device, to collect data on their app usage, web browsing history, web search history, location history, personal messages, photos, videos, emails, and Amazon order history. Participants received up to $20 per-month to participate in the program, which was promoted to teenagers via targeted advertising on Instagram and Snapchat. Facebook Research is administered by third-party beta testing services, including Applause and BetaBound, and requires users to install a Facebook root certificate on their phone. On iOS, this is prohibited by Apple's Enterprise Developer License Agreement, as the methods used are intended solely for use by a company's employees (for use cases such as internal software specific to their environment, and internal pre-release versions of apps)”

> In what way is this a conspiracy theory or guilt by association? I don't think it is. (Except maybe the statement that he's an Israel citizen, though I think in this context it's a legit statement to make.)

Yes, the Israeli citizen comment. Obviously the comment is meant to criticize Rosen. Being an Israeli citizen is only a criticism by some conspiracy theory or guilt by association.

Currently the GGP comment says, "with a strong pro-Israel bias". I don't think it was there when I commented or I wouldn't have said what I said.