After EU, the US now pulls up X, Meta, Google and TikTok over failure to curb Israel-Hamas fake news

The United States has become the latest country to pull up various social media platforms for their failure to curb fake news and false content over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war on their platforms.

US Senator Michael Bennet has inquired about the measures taken by major technology companies, including Meta, X, TikTok, and Google, to combat the dissemination of false and misleading information related to the Israel-Hamas conflict on their respective platforms.

In a letter addressed to the company executives, Senator Bennet, a member of the Democratic Party, expressed concerns about the widespread circulation of deceptive content on social media platforms, some of which have garnered millions of views since the onset of the conflict.

Visuals from older conflicts, video game footage, and altered documents are among misleading content that has flooded social media platforms since Hamas militants attacked Israeli civilians on October 7.

“In many cases, your platforms’ algorithms have amplified this content, contributing to a dangerous cycle of outrage, engagement, and redistribution,” Bennet said.

The Senator’s comments come after European Union industry chief Thierry Breton blasted the companies, demanding they take stricter steps to battle disinformation amid the escalating conflict. In his letter, Bennet has posed a series of questions to the companies seeking details on their content moderation practices and sought answers by October 31.

The social media firms have outlined some steps they’ve taken in recent days in response to the conflict. The short video app TikTok said it had hired more Arabic and Hebrew-speaking content moderators. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said it had removed or marked as disturbing more than 795,000 pieces of content in Hebrew or Arabic in the first three days since the Hamas attack. X and Google-owned YouTube both said they had also taken down harmful content.

But Bennet said those actions were not enough.

“The mountain of false content clearly demonstrates that your current policies and protocols are inadequate,” he said in the letter.

Bennet also slammed the four companies for having laid off staff from their trust and safety teams in the past year that were in charge of monitoring for false and misleading content.

Twitter shelved 15 per cent of its trust and safety staff and dissolved a related council in Nov. 2022 after Elon Musk acquired the company, cutting more staff last month, Bennet noted. Meta reduced 100 similar positions in January, while Google reduced by a third a team creating tools to counter online hate speech and disinformation, Bennet said.

“These decisions contribute to a cascade of violence, paranoia, and distrust around the world,” he said.

“Your platforms are helping produce an information ecosystem in which basic facts are increasingly in dispute, while untrustworthy sources are repeatedly designated as authoritative.”

(With input from agencies)