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The Atlantic: How Social-Media Sites Can Fight Hate Without Censorship
The Atlantic - (archived: https://archive.ph/ql4As ) How Social-Media Sites Can Fight Hate Without Censorship
X may be a lost cause, but the other platforms don’t have to be.
By Yair Rosenberg
April 15, 2025, 7 AM ET
The Maccabeats are the premier Jewish a cappella group in America. Their bubblegum bops have drawn millions of views on YouTube, live gigs around the world, and a devoted following on social media. But on January 27, the group’s lighthearted attempt to dance the hora turned into an anti-Semitic mosh pit.
The Maccabeats had posted to Instagram a 46-second recording of “Hava Nagila,” the Jewish folk song that is a staple of weddings, bar mitzvahs, and the occasional Bruce Springsteen concert. Before long, comments flooded the post, echoing every possible anti-Jewish stereotype. “The sound you hear when you accidentally drop a coin,” read the top comment, with just under 30,000 likes. “Pornography, banking industry, CIA, and US government main theme,” read another, referencing entities that anti-Semites allege are controlled by Jews (12,942 likes). “Last thing a politician hears before being enslaved” (7,300 likes). “My nose is already growing” (3,439 likes). “Palestina Libre!”—a completely reasonable response to an American Jewish a cappella jam (3,158 likes). And of course, an animated GIF of a machine counting money (16,168 likes).
A brigade of bigots had apparently stumbled upon the post and made a sport out of trying to top one another’s insults. Some of the comments and likes came from accounts with verified checkmarks. As of this writing, so many responses contain slurs, conspiracies, and crude taunts that any one person who tried to report them would sacrifice untold time and sanity. And yet, this is the world that Meta has seemingly chosen.
On January 7, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta would be reforming its content-moderation regime and dialing back its automated filters to focus on “illegal and high-severity violations,” such as terrorism and child exploitation. “For lower-severity violations, we’re going to rely on someone reporting an issue before we take action,” Zuckerberg said. “The problem is that the filters make mistakes, and they take down a lot of content that they shouldn’t. So by dialing them back, we’re going to dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms.” The Meta CEO acknowledged that this change would involve a “trade-off,” but one that he felt was worthwhile: “It means we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.”
There’s much to recommend this position in the abstract. A lot of content moderation, although well intentioned, has failed to combat hateful and misleading material while sweeping up legitimate speech in its dragnet—not just on Meta’s platforms but on Twitter turned X, TikTok, and YouTube. Moderation gone amok has confused journalists and researchers reporting on bigotry and conspiracy theories with people advocating bigotry and conspiracy theories; has mistaken jokes for incitement; and has blocked political posts that happen to accidentally trip a poorly designed keyword search. Given these drawbacks, it’s reasonable for platforms to seek an alternative approach somewhere between that of Elon Musk’s X—where neo-Nazism is not just permitted but monetized—and the heavy-handed moderation regime of old Facebook.
/snip
X may be a lost cause, but the other platforms don’t have to be.
By Yair Rosenberg
April 15, 2025, 7 AM ET
The Maccabeats are the premier Jewish a cappella group in America. Their bubblegum bops have drawn millions of views on YouTube, live gigs around the world, and a devoted following on social media. But on January 27, the group’s lighthearted attempt to dance the hora turned into an anti-Semitic mosh pit.
The Maccabeats had posted to Instagram a 46-second recording of “Hava Nagila,” the Jewish folk song that is a staple of weddings, bar mitzvahs, and the occasional Bruce Springsteen concert. Before long, comments flooded the post, echoing every possible anti-Jewish stereotype. “The sound you hear when you accidentally drop a coin,” read the top comment, with just under 30,000 likes. “Pornography, banking industry, CIA, and US government main theme,” read another, referencing entities that anti-Semites allege are controlled by Jews (12,942 likes). “Last thing a politician hears before being enslaved” (7,300 likes). “My nose is already growing” (3,439 likes). “Palestina Libre!”—a completely reasonable response to an American Jewish a cappella jam (3,158 likes). And of course, an animated GIF of a machine counting money (16,168 likes).
A brigade of bigots had apparently stumbled upon the post and made a sport out of trying to top one another’s insults. Some of the comments and likes came from accounts with verified checkmarks. As of this writing, so many responses contain slurs, conspiracies, and crude taunts that any one person who tried to report them would sacrifice untold time and sanity. And yet, this is the world that Meta has seemingly chosen.
On January 7, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta would be reforming its content-moderation regime and dialing back its automated filters to focus on “illegal and high-severity violations,” such as terrorism and child exploitation. “For lower-severity violations, we’re going to rely on someone reporting an issue before we take action,” Zuckerberg said. “The problem is that the filters make mistakes, and they take down a lot of content that they shouldn’t. So by dialing them back, we’re going to dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms.” The Meta CEO acknowledged that this change would involve a “trade-off,” but one that he felt was worthwhile: “It means we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.”
There’s much to recommend this position in the abstract. A lot of content moderation, although well intentioned, has failed to combat hateful and misleading material while sweeping up legitimate speech in its dragnet—not just on Meta’s platforms but on Twitter turned X, TikTok, and YouTube. Moderation gone amok has confused journalists and researchers reporting on bigotry and conspiracy theories with people advocating bigotry and conspiracy theories; has mistaken jokes for incitement; and has blocked political posts that happen to accidentally trip a poorly designed keyword search. Given these drawbacks, it’s reasonable for platforms to seek an alternative approach somewhere between that of Elon Musk’s X—where neo-Nazism is not just permitted but monetized—and the heavy-handed moderation regime of old Facebook.
/snip