Spotlight Organization: CyberWell
Online antisemitism is the most prevalent form of Jew-hatred today. Recent events have clearly demonstrated the critical importance of removing this vitriol before it festers.
CyberWell is an ethical-tech Israeli nonprofit dedicated to driving the enforcement and improvement of community standards and hate speech policies across social media platforms and empowering existing efforts and users to eradicate online Jew-hatred.
CyberWell has built a first-of-its-kind database that tracks, analyzes and reports online antisemitism across five of the leading social media platforms in multiple languages in real time, providing an accurate picture of the nature and magnitude of digital Jew-hatred and applying consistent pressure on the social media companies to do better.
“We envision a world where Jewish social media users feel safe to express their identity openly, free of harassment. By introducing a technologically advanced and scalable solution for public use, CyberWell is on a mission to improve the digital future for the Jewish people,” they state.
“Leveraging the most advanced and disruptive technology available in the open-source intel and big data space, we intend to air the dirty laundry of online antisemitism hosted by social media platforms until the accountability problem is solved, antisemitism and hate speech policies are enforced, community standards are improved, and changes are matched by dedicated resources and tech.”
CyberWell is revealing Twitter’s antisemitism crisis in real time.
CyberWell joins more than 180 civil rights groups and NGOs from across the world in a letter calling on Elon Musk to address that crisis by adopting the widely accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and integrating it into the platform’s community standards.
Adopted by 38 countries including the USA, the IHRA definition provides a comprehensive and independent standard by which to evaluate antisemitic content and guide decisions on removal of posts in violation of community standards. Its adoption would provide content moderation teams with a valuable and consistent tool, increasing Twitter’s credibility by making it safer for the Jewish community.
The letter sent to Elon Musk and Twitter cites more than 1,000 antisemitic posts from the last two years sourced from CyberWell’s interactive database, that provide examples of all eleven major categories of antisemitism in the IHRA definition. That sample, while small, has a potential reach of more than 7 million accounts.
CyberWell founder and Executive Director Tal-Or Cohen (in photo) told Elon Musk in her letter:
“Mr. Musk, we know that you are a technologist. If anyone can find a way to integrate the definition of antisemitism into Twitter’s Trust & Safety policies, it is you. Twitter’s Jewish users are under siege right now, and you have a unique opportunity to transform that reality for the better.”
The IHRA definition is instrumental to CyberWell’s work, providing an independent standard and forestalling potential disagreement over whether content is antisemitic.
“Data must be the cornerstone of our fight for accountability on social media,” said CyberWell founder and Executive Director Tal-Or Cohen. “Anecdotes are powerful but using hard numbers to demonstrate skyrocketing digital Jew-hatred makes it impossible for platforms like Twitter to ignore the crisis.”
CyberWell’s entire process is revolutionary and unique. The platform starts by scouring leading social media platforms for antisemitic content, then passes it through a powerful AI analysis filter before a team of professional intelligence analysts classifies it by the IHRA definition as well as by its respective network’s content policies. Antisemitism and digital policy experts vet all findings for community standard compliance.
Out of this data sample in particular, 84% of the identified antisemitic Tweets violated Twitter’s own Hateful Conduct policy, but only 35% of them were removed after being reported by CyberWell, validating the concerns of Jewish users. Additional insights can be found in The State of Antisemitism on Twitter, a CyberWell analysis, which includes infographics and data visualizations.
“Live data on digital antisemitism has massive implications for both user experience and advertiser brand safety,” said Cohen. “Just as Jewish users shouldn’t be subjected to rampant hate, neither should brands support a platform that might display their ad next to an antisemitic caricature.”
Jew-hatred on social media can spill out into the real world, as evidenced by violent hate crimes in Pittsburgh, Poway, and elsewhere. The rise of online antisemitism parallels a national and global phenomenon, with antisemitic incidents up 34% in the United States from 2020 to 2021.
Twitter cannot function as the “modern town square” if minority communities are targeted by bigots with impunity. For more information on CyberWell and its efforts to hold platforms accountable, visit https://cyberwell.org/.