Summary:
Facebook has often been suspected of being unfair and removing only posts and pages that attack Palestinians, while turning a blind eye to pages that are violently anti-Semitic. In 2016, the NGO Shurat HaDin - Israel Law Center launched "The Big Facebook Experiment" which sought to expose what it viewed as Facebook's double standards regarding anti-Israel sentiments vis-a-vis the simultaneous launch of two Facebook pages: Stop Palestinians and Stop Israel.
Allegations:
- Following the launch of the two nearly-identical pages, the NGO posted hateful content simultaneously on both pages. Next, it reported both the pages to see which, if either, would be removed. The page inciting violence against Palestinians was closed by Facebook for "containing credible threat of violence” which “violated our [Facebook’s] community standards,” said Shurat HaDin.
- Before staging "The Big Facebook Experiment" the NGO had filed an unprecedented lawsuits in October against Facebook on behalf of 20,000 Israelis claiming that the social network allows Palestinian terrorists to incite violent attacks against Israelis and Jews.
- ProPublica in an 2017 investigation also claimed that a website was able to target ads at Facebook users who expressed interest in terms like "Jew haters" and "how to burn Jews."
- In March 2019, Facebook's subsidiary Instagram, declined to remove an an anti-semitic image posted by right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Defence:
- Facebook in response to the anti-semitic content on both the staged Shurat Hadin page against Israelis and Alex Jones Instagram post refused to pull down the content because it did not violate their community standards.
- In response to the ProPublica investigation, Facebook removed the hateful categories and said it would prevent such categories from popping up for potential advertisers.
- Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said, "The fact that hateful terms were even offered as options was totally inappropriate and a fail on our part. We removed them and when that was not totally effective, we disabled that targeting section in our ad systems."