For what it's worth, The Intercept has not been able to verify what this group is claiming.
>A SMALL GROUP of volunteers from Israel’s tech sector is working tirelessly to remove content it says doesn’t belong on platforms like Facebook and TikTok, tapping personal connections at those and other Big Tech companies to have posts deleted outside official channels, the project’s founder told The Intercept.
>The Intercept was unable to independently confirm that sympathetic workers at Big Tech firms are responding to the group’s complaints or verify that the group was behind the removal of the content it has taken credit for having deleted.
Who is the judge of “inflammatory” content? It’s just censorship plain and simple. Why not let the truth be told?
Edit: judging by the way the votes keep going up and down there's a yin to the gatekeepers of inflammatory content's yang. These are actions of a rogue state y'all.
There is a network of pro-Israel and even Israeli government affiliated corporations and NGOs that successfully lobby for extreme censorship and social restrictions, such as a ban on sharing and even viewing all Gaza war footage in Australia, and the numerous anti-boycott and anti-organization rules across government organizations in 30+ American states.
Even if it can't be confirmed as of yet, I have no doubt that they are working on or have actually achieved the connections to make this possible.
I often see posts in technical groups im in from people asking for help re-opening their hacked instagram or facebook accounts. Apparently there is an internal-only form for Meta employees to speed up the process for friends/family
> Iron Truth claims its tech industry back channels have led to the removal of roughly 1,000 posts tagged by its members as false, antisemitic, or “pro-terrorist” across platforms such as X, YouTube, and TikTok.
Does anyone know if that’s a lot? I don’t know either way. I just have a gut feeling that compared to the number of posts made by bots on any political matter it barely matters.
I wonder if it wouldn’t be more efficient to counter with more bots going in the other direction with likes and posts.
You have to measure the effect by summing the reach of every removed post. Removing a post from n account with ten followers is not the same as removing one from an account with ten million followers.
I'm just a random schmuck with no backchannel connections, but I get Twitter notifications several times a day about accounts being locked or suspended as a result of my report. The internet is awash with explicit antisemitism.
> Among a list of LinkedIn content that Iron Truth told its Telegram followers it had passed along to the company was a post demanding evidence for the beheaded baby claim, categorized by the project as “Terror/Fake.”
Just one instance of that is one too many in my books.
> they have connections to the policy team,” Kaganovitch told The Intercept, referring to the personnel at social media firms who set rules for permissible speech. “Most of them are product managers, software developers. …
I wonder if they see how the whole thing backfires. “Look how we conspire with our secret workers integrated into the larger media and tech companies…”
I suppose the idea was that it wouldn’t be made too public.
This should be looked at in light of the problems Israel faces.
Israel is in serious danger of losing US support.[1][2] Outside of the US, there is very little support for what Israel is doing.[3] In the US, support is bought and paid for with political contributions. “If there was no lobby pushing Congress in a particular direction in a really forceful way, the position of the US Congress on the war in Gaza would be fundamentally different.”[4] The social media effort is only a small part of this.
>they have connections to the policy team,” Kaganovitch told The Intercept, referring to the personnel at social media firms who set rules for permissible speech. “Most of them are product managers, software developers.
And no one gets fired for working in secret for dubious, shady groups. No internal rules were broken, no laws were broken.
I wonder if this group also operates on HN. Two weeks ago I posted a ask HN post that was immediately removed. After seeing that, I concluded that I should drastically reduce my exposure to the media since I think It's just a tool to manipulate.
If you're worried about specific examples, you should email the mods (dang, that is), at [email protected] and ask what's going on. I've found dang to be super responsive and thoughtful in his replies when I've had an occasion to ask something about HN's operation.
That's a silly conclusion to those events. HN basically has a policy of flagging anything involving politics, including things much less controversial than israel/palestine.
Many of us are in the tech industry. Has anyone seen this sort of thing happen? Or is this something we wouldn't be aware of since it's usually on the "content moderation" side of the house? (I haven't ever worked in social media, so not really familiar with content moderation other than removing the occasional dick pic)
Edit:
> Most of them are product managers, software developers. … They work with the policy teams with an internal set of tools to forward links and explanations about why they need to be removed.
If you look at the extensive reporting done by racket.news around the Twitter Files and Facebook Files, you can learn about the direct back channels many government agencies had to directly report thousands of people to be banned or shadow banned. A federal court judge concluded that it was the biggest violation of free speech in modern history. He ordered the government to no longer contact the social media companies unless something is found to be illegal. This applied to government agencies but does not apply to these groups that might be organized or funded by a foreign government.
I've been part of a moderation team in a (much) smaller context. Most people want to do good work, but in the end, we're all human, so of course anybody could be influenced, especially in such volatile situations.
How far people are actually influenced and in which direction... that's anybody's guess.
only one data point, but fwiw when I worked for Google I found some actively toxic youtube content w/upwards of 500k views that was telling children to off themselves, and despite using my employee back-channel connections the most I was able to get was an eventual "I'm not allowed to do anything about this" from a YouTube moderator, though it seemed to be for technical reasons (all the nasty content was in annotations, which apparently weren't wired into the moderation pipeline). There definitely wasn't a red button for me to hit as an employee to get it taken down.
I used to help run a Facebook page that shared a variety of content. We'd post political things sometimes and we'd get a few angry messages, that was normal.
One incident stands out because we received far more messages than I'd ever seen, it was the time we posted a news story about Netanyahu blaming a Palestinian for the Holocaust. We got several messages about what horrible lying racists we were, that was common to all the messages, but they had one main difference. About half the messages claimed Netanyahu never said what he said. The other half claimed he did say it, but he was right.
Yes, of course. Content management is the expected standard when dealing with crowdsourced content. This includes any data coming from social media. This is subject to essentially private, subjective concerns.
Even if you look into it from the outside you see it happen. This isn't a new phenomenon, it really took off steam around 2014 or 2015. Then when Trump was elected it hit another level.
It was clearly shown in the Twitter files that there are many relations deep into social media companies and that is very likely true for every larger platform.
It would be surprising if there weren't backchannels, because they have become relevant, sadly.
It’s notable that suddenly there’s push back against DEI initiatives, anti-racism and “decolonize” language the moment it was used to criticize Israel.
No, Many criticized these initiatives for years because they are a bundle of bad ideas. And it was predictable that these ideas would also be used to criticise Israel as the alleged oppressor.
It was a predictable as its failings to alleviate prejudice in any form. It is because of the bad ideas, not political allegiance.
>I copied the URL of the video and sent it to a team in [Facebook parent company] Meta, some Israelis that work for Meta, and I told them that this video needs to be removed and actually they removed it after a few days.”
Some commenters here ask, "is this guy lying," but I can't help but wonder... was there any correlation between him flagging the post and Facebook's internal misinformation police taking it down on their own? They take down a lot of content every day. It would be pretty funny if the whole crusade was made up of people who could find doomed posts a few minutes before the moderation system does, and so think they're the ones taking things down.
Anyone who has ever posted a "I need help" here on HN and gotten support has also used "backchannels".
An actual concern would be if this "backchannel" turned out to be messaging an insider who acts outside of policy. We know the Saudis and other state backed groups had insiders in Twitter at least, but I'm much less inclined to believe there are any pro-israel insiders in say, TikTok.
> We know the Saudis and other state backed groups had insiders in Twitter at least
That former twitter employee was found guilty of acting as an agent of a foreign government. So far the Israeli lobby has a free pass to meddle in without triggering the same treatment. See https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-twitter-employee-found...
> I'm much less inclined to believe there are any pro-israel insiders in say, TikTok.
The sheer volume of pro-palestine, pro-hamas (those are not the same), pro-islam and anti-jewish sentiment[0] I am bombarded with on Tiktok tells me that either:
* there is no moderation
* There is absurdly overwhelming pro-terrorism and racist sentiment
* The bot/spam farms are in full war mode.
I find it hard to believe that content is being moderated with any pro-israel bias on tiktok.
> Iron Truth members have flagged thousands of posts for removal, from clearly racist or false content to posts that are merely sympathetic to Palestinians.
(emphasis added)
If you aren't connected enough to get Google to fix your email, your business is disrupted. It's unfair but life moves on. Maybe next time you don't use Gmail.
The stakes are much higher here in an actual war / genocide. People are starving, dying, having their homes stolen, etc. and this is an attempt to deny them a voice.
Also FTA:
> I copied the URL of the video and sent it to a team in [Facebook parent company] Meta, some Israelis that work for Meta, and I told them that this video needs to be removed and actually they removed it after a few days.”
American companies should not engage in propaganda for a foreign country. I find it reprehensible that foreign nationals from a nation currently engaged in conflict are deliberately working together to push a foreign agenda on the people of the entire world.
This is way, way different than not being able to use Google apps for business.
I have found a lot of pro-Palestinian YouTube videos are put behind warnings pages unnecessarily - the preventing them from going viral.
Here is a great example, this Chris Hayes of MSNBC news segment on the MSNBC YouTube channel where he is incredibly critical of what Israeli leaders are saying:
Here is probably the best example, here is an official IDF video that shows clearly dead bodies and there is no YouTube content warning, just a warning that the IDF put in their video - thus allowing this video to still go viral: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta7ScT67vQ0
[+] [-] Qem|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjulius|2 years ago|reply
>A SMALL GROUP of volunteers from Israel’s tech sector is working tirelessly to remove content it says doesn’t belong on platforms like Facebook and TikTok, tapping personal connections at those and other Big Tech companies to have posts deleted outside official channels, the project’s founder told The Intercept.
>The Intercept was unable to independently confirm that sympathetic workers at Big Tech firms are responding to the group’s complaints or verify that the group was behind the removal of the content it has taken credit for having deleted.
[+] [-] amiga1200|2 years ago|reply
Edit: judging by the way the votes keep going up and down there's a yin to the gatekeepers of inflammatory content's yang. These are actions of a rogue state y'all.
[+] [-] DoItToMe81|2 years ago|reply
Even if it can't be confirmed as of yet, I have no doubt that they are working on or have actually achieved the connections to make this possible.
[+] [-] cqqxo4zV46cp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] shmatt|2 years ago|reply
I often see posts in technical groups im in from people asking for help re-opening their hacked instagram or facebook accounts. Apparently there is an internal-only form for Meta employees to speed up the process for friends/family
[+] [-] tazu|2 years ago|reply
You can also sleep with those employees to speed it up [1].
[1]: https://www.dailydot.com/irl/kittylixo-onlyfans-instagram-em...
[+] [-] netsharc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xenospn|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] GrumpySloth|2 years ago|reply
Does anyone know if that’s a lot? I don’t know either way. I just have a gut feeling that compared to the number of posts made by bots on any political matter it barely matters.
I wonder if it wouldn’t be more efficient to counter with more bots going in the other direction with likes and posts.
[+] [-] strulovich|2 years ago|reply
But, there’s a power law distribution for virality, so removing the top 1000 most viral posts might still be impactful.
[+] [-] bjourne|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdietrich|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnnyworker|2 years ago|reply
Just one instance of that is one too many in my books.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/beheaded-babies-how-uk-media-...
[+] [-] ars|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdtsc|2 years ago|reply
I wonder if they see how the whole thing backfires. “Look how we conspire with our secret workers integrated into the larger media and tech companies…”
I suppose the idea was that it wouldn’t be made too public.
[+] [-] Animats|2 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us-public-support-israel-drops...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/31/us/politics/us-israel-ham...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/12/united-nations...
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/10/congress-mem...
[+] [-] DeathArrow|2 years ago|reply
And no one gets fired for working in secret for dubious, shady groups. No internal rules were broken, no laws were broken.
[+] [-] sigma5|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kelnos|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bawolff|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mupuff1234|2 years ago|reply
It's just a divisive topic.
[+] [-] brobinson|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] octopoc|2 years ago|reply
Edit:
> Most of them are product managers, software developers. … They work with the policy teams with an internal set of tools to forward links and explanations about why they need to be removed.
[+] [-] kornhole|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yoric|2 years ago|reply
How far people are actually influenced and in which direction... that's anybody's guess.
[+] [-] kevingadd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calibas|2 years ago|reply
One incident stands out because we received far more messages than I'd ever seen, it was the time we posted a news story about Netanyahu blaming a Palestinian for the Holocaust. We got several messages about what horrible lying racists we were, that was common to all the messages, but they had one main difference. About half the messages claimed Netanyahu never said what he said. The other half claimed he did say it, but he was right.
[+] [-] JeffSnazz|2 years ago|reply
Yes, of course. Content management is the expected standard when dealing with crowdsourced content. This includes any data coming from social media. This is subject to essentially private, subjective concerns.
[+] [-] raxxorraxor|2 years ago|reply
It was clearly shown in the Twitter files that there are many relations deep into social media companies and that is very likely true for every larger platform.
It would be surprising if there weren't backchannels, because they have become relevant, sadly.
[+] [-] IModALargeSub|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nostromo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raxxorraxor|2 years ago|reply
It was a predictable as its failings to alleviate prejudice in any form. It is because of the bad ideas, not political allegiance.
[+] [-] tome|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] incomingpain|2 years ago|reply
I find this article failed to verify this claim at all.
I can find nothing elsewhere about 'iron truth'. It seems to be a creation by this website.
Then I goto their main page right now.
https://theintercept.com/2024/01/11/dnc-biden-israel-palesti...
Also multiple entries of 'Israel's war on Gaza'
Which is simply not factually correct. The palestinians are the ones who declared war and invaded Israel. Israel is in a defensive war.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-intercept/
I would say they being far left and low factuality seems to have been proven here.
[+] [-] standapart|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] valeg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DeathArrow|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatshisface|2 years ago|reply
Some commenters here ask, "is this guy lying," but I can't help but wonder... was there any correlation between him flagging the post and Facebook's internal misinformation police taking it down on their own? They take down a lot of content every day. It would be pretty funny if the whole crusade was made up of people who could find doomed posts a few minutes before the moderation system does, and so think they're the ones taking things down.
[+] [-] 6510|2 years ago|reply
https://www.jpost.com/Features/In-Thespotlight/Want-to-help-...
[+] [-] mrguyorama|2 years ago|reply
An actual concern would be if this "backchannel" turned out to be messaging an insider who acts outside of policy. We know the Saudis and other state backed groups had insiders in Twitter at least, but I'm much less inclined to believe there are any pro-israel insiders in say, TikTok.
[+] [-] Qem|2 years ago|reply
That former twitter employee was found guilty of acting as an agent of a foreign government. So far the Israeli lobby has a free pass to meddle in without triggering the same treatment. See https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-twitter-employee-found...
[+] [-] dijit|2 years ago|reply
The sheer volume of pro-palestine, pro-hamas (those are not the same), pro-islam and anti-jewish sentiment[0] I am bombarded with on Tiktok tells me that either:
* there is no moderation
* There is absurdly overwhelming pro-terrorism and racist sentiment
* The bot/spam farms are in full war mode.
I find it hard to believe that content is being moderated with any pro-israel bias on tiktok.
[0]: https://imgur.com/a/JBC8EL3
[+] [-] octopoc|2 years ago|reply
> Iron Truth members have flagged thousands of posts for removal, from clearly racist or false content to posts that are merely sympathetic to Palestinians.
(emphasis added)
If you aren't connected enough to get Google to fix your email, your business is disrupted. It's unfair but life moves on. Maybe next time you don't use Gmail.
The stakes are much higher here in an actual war / genocide. People are starving, dying, having their homes stolen, etc. and this is an attempt to deny them a voice.
Also FTA:
> I copied the URL of the video and sent it to a team in [Facebook parent company] Meta, some Israelis that work for Meta, and I told them that this video needs to be removed and actually they removed it after a few days.”
American companies should not engage in propaganda for a foreign country. I find it reprehensible that foreign nationals from a nation currently engaged in conflict are deliberately working together to push a foreign agenda on the people of the entire world.
This is way, way different than not being able to use Google apps for business.
[+] [-] maratc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yorwba|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bhouston|2 years ago|reply
Here is a great example, this Chris Hayes of MSNBC news segment on the MSNBC YouTube channel where he is incredibly critical of what Israeli leaders are saying:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WTHVseqZdw
Notice the warning says:
"The following content may contain graphic or violent imagery"
There are no such warnings on the official MSNBC website on this video, thus it is specific to YouTube: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/chris-hayes-the-war-in-...
I've seen this happen on another video, one calling on the games industry to be supportive of the Palestinian struggle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDB_wYdn5f4
You can find a ton of videos on YouTube with similar content or worse that the Chris Hayes's video that is critical of Israel, but they are allowed: https://www.youtube.com/@msnbc/search?query=israel
Here is probably the best example, here is an official IDF video that shows clearly dead bodies and there is no YouTube content warning, just a warning that the IDF put in their video - thus allowing this video to still go viral: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta7ScT67vQ0