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Dear John,
“How many lives will be lost before Big Tech puts people over profit?”
That’s what I asked the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs yesterday as I testified about the harms caused by social media’s unchecked power to spread disinformation and hate.
I reminded the Senators that with the lack of accountability Facebook and other social media companies benefit from, antisemites and other extremists have found a haven to reach, recruit and radicalize.
This shield for inaction on removing radical content can have major ramifications. For one horrifying example, the words of the killer in the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue building were shared online and have been directly cited as an inspiration for other shooters — at a synagogue in Poway CA, and at a Walmart in El Paso, TX.
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You can watch my full testimony here.
You may have seen that yesterday, Facebook changed their corporate name to Meta. This is reminiscent of when Big Tobacco giant Philip Morris changed its name to Altria. The name changed on the stock ticker, but they still sold cancer in a stick.
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ADL’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt was on CNN the other day to discuss the danger that unfettered Big Tech company platforms like Facebook present as superspreaders of antisemitism, hate and misinformation.
As Jonathan noted about the recent wave of Facebook leaks, “we knew that the platform was perpetuating antisemitism and racism, extremism and hate. What we didn’t know, what’s hard to believe, is how much their management knew.“
I encourage you to take three minutes to watch him discuss this clear danger on CNN, as he points out how Facebook (aka Meta) knowingly misled legislators and the public about their willingness and effectiveness in regulating extremism on their platforms.
How can we address these massive concerns? It’s time for a whole-of-government, whole-of-industry, whole-of-society approach to fighting online hate. We ask you to take a moment to sign our
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REPAIR Plan petition for a comprehensive set of steps to push hate and extremism back to the fringes of the digital world.
Thank you for standing with ADL to call for accountability, transparency and for Big Tech to #StopHateforProfit.
Sincerely,
Dave Sifry
VP, Center for Technology and Society
ADL
P.S. Want to know more? There are excellent opportunities to hear directly from the experts about fighting hate online at the
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Never Is Now Summit from Nov. 7-9. Our closing session features a spotlight conversation with cybersecurity reporter Sheera Frenkel, co-author of “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination” and Kara Swisher, described by Newsweek as Silicon Valley’s “most powerful tech journalist.” We also have breakout sessions on How Disinformation Campaigns Fuel Antisemitism and Extremism, and Click. Like. Share. Why Regulating Social Media Platforms is So Difficult. The latter session has CLE credit available for attorneys. Go to
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NeverIsNow.org for more info.
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