Twitter’s recent inclusion of anti-Jewish statements in its hate-speech policy is receiving mixed reactions from Jewish activists, per reporting by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“There’s no doubt that the recent updates to Twitter’s Hateful Conduct Policy and account labeling is a big step in the right direction, but it’s also long overdue so that Twitter may still be behind the ball on effectively countering viral hatred,” Israel Bitton, executive director of Americans Against Antisemitism, told the outlet.
Twitter’s April 8 changes include forbidding “hateful imagery,” including swastikas, and it also probits targeting individuals or groups using terms like “lynchings” and “genocide.” It also precludes manipulating images and appending yellow Star of David badges.
Since billionaire Elon Musk took over the company, Twitter has reportedly seen an increase in antisemitic content. It has also come under fire for not removing anti-Jewish content sufficiently quickly. The company also faces a fine, which could be as high as $55 million, in Germany.
Kenneth L. Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, told the Daily Caller that Twitter has an antisemitism problem, but it also has a history of suppressing controversial speech more when it comes from conservatives.
The policy changes “will give little assurance to those whose speech, while forceful, is legitimate,” he said. “Twitter should be very specific about Jew-hatred, calling out Holocaust denial specifically and using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism to identify hateful speech.”
