Facebook has been accused of allowing jihadists to make use of their pages on the platform for recruitment and training of terrorists and planning terror attacks as well. These accusations have come from thousands of Israeli Jews, who brought legal action against the social networking site in a New York court on Monday.
Facebook not doing enough
The Israel-based non-profit Shurat HaDin – The Israel Law Center – filed a lawsuit on Monday in the Supreme Court for the State of New York, demanding an injunction against Facebook. Some 20,000 Israelis joined it. The law center wants Facebook to remove the terrorists’ pages on its site and adopt better monitoring policies to ensure that users who post videos glorifying and encouraging terrorist attacks are blocked.
Israeli attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of Shurat HaDin, said, “The terrorists do not come on their own; they write posts and encourage their friends to kill Jews. Facebook has been transformed into an anti-Semitic incubator for murder.”
The lawsuit accuses Facebook of “intentionally disregarding” the posts that the Palestinians made on its site to widespread incitement and encourage people for murdering the Jews. “Many of these murderers were motivated to commit their heinous crimes by incitement to murder they read on Facebook……,” the complaint read.
Have proper tools in place
A Facebook spokesman said the lawsuit is without merit. Speaking to FoxNews.com, the company said that it wants all its users to feel safe while using its platform, adding that the social network does not support any content that encourages violence, direct threats, terrorism or hate speech.
Facebook said it has 1.5 billion users around the globe, and to help them understand what all is allowed on the platform, it has a set of Community Standards. If users come across any content that, according to them, is in violation of their standards, they can use the reporting tools to help Facebook investigate and take quick action against it.
Facebook said it encourages all its users to report inappropriate or dangerous messages linked to pages, profiles or individual content. The company has a team of safety experts that investigate serious messages. It appears that Israelis are not satisfied with this and believe Facebook needs to do a lot more, especially after the recent terror wave that resulted in the brutal murder of seven Israelis.
