The co-chairs of the bipartisan Senate taskforce on combatting antisemitism demanded answers from the parent company of Facebook and Instagram on Tuesday about what it is doing to stop foreign bot networks from promulgating Jew-hatred.
Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Jackie Rosen (D-Nev.) wrote to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to ask that the company take new steps and be more transparent about antisemitism on its social networks.
“We cannot continue to play catch up as foreign agents and extremists abuse American social media platforms to spread hate and sow discord on American soil and across the globe,” the senators wrote.
“While we commend Meta for the existing verification processes and integrity policies in place, more can and must be done to prevent malicious actors from exploiting Meta’s policies to spread harmful content online,” they wrote.The duo asks Zuckerberg six questions about what Meta is doing in response to online Jew-hatred given that the company’s current transparency reports do not appear to track “antisemitism” within the broader category of “hateful conduct.”
Many of those questions focus on the role played by bot networks originating outside the United States that operate “at scale” to “amplify antisemitic narratives.”
“Given the current record-breaking incidents of Jew-hatred, which Americans from across faith groups say they see mostly online, more comprehensive reforms are needed to safeguard users and to limit the proliferation of antisemitic content,” the senators wrote.
They recommend that Facebook and Instagram label user accounts with their country of origin as an “impactful step toward combatting foreign-based influence networks.”
Meta rival SpaceXAI, which operates the social network X, formerly known as Twitter, began revealing the countries of origin of its users in 2025.
That decision revealed that many popular accounts purporting to be based in Gaza were actually published from countries like Russia and Pakistan.
