OPINION | Can social media giants stop Israel's crimes against humanity?
Ersin Çahmutoğlu, a cyber security expert at ADEO Cyber Security, wrote about the attitude of social media giants on the Israeli-Palestinian issue for AA Analyses.
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Social media applications, which are actively used by billions of people around the world, sometimes endeavour to instantly convey what is happening on the other side of the world, and sometimes enrich the platform with commercial or entertainment content. In doing so, they determine what and how they will show to users with certain algorithms and content production policies.
The algorithms and policies set by social media companies directly affect which events and agendas users can see around the world. This situation gives rise to debates that social media giants manipulate the agenda.
Algorithms and censorship policies manipulate the agenda
Many social media platforms, especially X, Meta, Google and TikTok, are endeavouring to spread the agenda set by algorithms rather than the agenda that users want to see. In this regard, almost all social media giants act with algorithms and policies created for similar purposes.
To better understand the issue, we can look at an example published by X. As stated in the official statements of the X company, we see whatever content the algorithms designed with company policies want to show us on the platform. The application does not leave the choice to us and makes its own decision. Thanks to these policies, the most discussed and interacted topics and content on the platform are presented to all users in the relevant country.
How the algorithms are determined is a complete mystery. According to experts, many social media companies use algorithms called "black boxes". This means that the inner workings of the algorithms are kept secret from users. This is where the real problem starts.
Secret algorithms actually manipulate the agenda in a sense. Social media companies design algorithms, sometimes with instructions from governments and sometimes in line with the commercial interests of the company, as in the case of Twitter Files. In this regard, the attitudes of social media giants, which have recently tried to cover up Israel's crimes against humanity in Palestine, have been the subject of great debate.
Social media giants' stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
In particular, we can see that Israel's genocidal actions in Palestine cannot stand out as an agenda on many social media platforms, in other words, they are censored. Especially on Facebook and Instagram, the two biggest Meta platforms, behaviours such as suspending users' accounts, censoring or even completely removing posts due to posts about Israeli terror and persecution reinforce this idea.
Published reports and research have revealed that the censorship of Palestinian content on Instagram and Facebook is "systemic and global". It was also revealed that Meta fully complied with "content removal" requests directly from the Israeli cyber authority, as required by the agreement.
In addition to Meta, there have been reports that TikTok is also conducting content moderation and implementing censorship policies on behalf of the Israeli government. According to official Israeli data, Meta and TikTok received more than 8,000 requests from Tel Aviv to remove content and removed 94 per cent of this content. It is stated that TikTok removed video clips, especially those supporting Palestine and shared with the hashtag "genocide" from various countries around the world, without any justification.
Google's stance in favour of the Israeli government is also among the issues discussed. The firing of a Google employee who criticised the company's activities in Israel and Google's signing of a $1.2 billion deal, called Project Nimbus, to provide artificial intelligence services to the Israeli military have further exacerbated this controversy.
As a result, social media companies such as Google, Meta and TikTok have reportedly proven to favour Israel. Posts from various countries are censored to draw attention to the human tragedy and genocidal acts in Palestine. Some users who make these posts are temporarily or completely banned from the platform. The social media giants' silence on Israel's atrocities and even responding positively to Tel Aviv's demands are likely to continue in the coming period.
Can social media stop Israel's crime against humanity?
In recent years, we have seen more clearly that social media can mobilise masses and shape societies. However, today, the reactions of societies around the world to Israel's genocidal attacks on Gaza on social networks are quite low. This is because the censorship policies implemented by social media giants through certain algorithms almost prevent the societies of the world from seeing the reality.
If the social media giants were to reflect the cruelty and horror of the Palestinian people without any censorship, and if they were to take a stance in favour of the civilians targeted by bomb attacks rather than in favour of Israel, perhaps the course of the war could change. In such a case, Western societies will also be able to organise and exert pressure on heads of state who support Israel, even unconditionally support the Tel Aviv government, through social media. Thus, the policies of the relevant Western states towards Israel will probably change. Therefore, it would be an important initiative for platforms such as X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok to take steps in this direction.
