Frances Haugen, a former senior Facebook employee, last week unveiled thousands of documents showing how from 2018, Facebook's algorithm prioritizes violent and hateful content.
And the hatred works: Facebook's annual revenue has more than doubled since then - from $ 56 billion in 2018 to $ 119 billion this year.
Hate-burning posts are worth a lot of money to Facebook executives;
For us it rose in the blood.
It did not start in 2018.
For years, security forces' investigations have demonstrated the impact of social media incitement on enthusiastic young people, but Israeli governments have preferred to hang their hopes on changing US legislation rather than initiating it.
We have scandalously missed the possibility of correcting this distortion.
In 2018, the "Facebook Law" was proposed, which was intended to impose a significant restriction on the freedom of incitement on social networks.
A few days before it was passed on second and third reading, it was removed from the agenda, on the grounds of danger to individual rights and freedom of expression.
It is doubtful whether the government of change, for all its components, will be able to correct the injustice.
The price is paid by the victims of terrorism and their families.
The rise of the audacity of young Arabs, who beat police officers in the face and upload the videos to social networks, is not accidental.
So are the waves of knives and terror the only ones who have beaten us mercilessly.
None of this was a momentary outburst of rage, but actions that relied on a well-oiled, deliberate and ongoing system of incitement on social media.
Freedom of expression on social media relies on archaic American law, which prevents states from defending themselves against terrorism. When the US Congress sought to protect social networks from being held accountable for content posted on their platforms, it amended section 230 of the Media Fairness Act in the early 1990s. The chains were then in their infancy, and legislators apparently did not understand what monster they were producing. The amendment means that social networks and Internet servers in the US have no responsibility for what surfers or users have posted, even if the content constitutes defamation, invasion of privacy or incitement to violence. The responsibility is further removed, Direct between the words of incitement and the incident of violence itself, which is almost impossible.
For years, social networks have refrained from cooperating with the countries in which they have operated, and have fought fiercely against regulatory threats because they did not want to share with anyone the immense power in navigating the boundaries of global discourse.
This is not only illogical, but also contrary to another law in the US, which prohibits the provision of terrorist assistance of any kind. It has now been proven that they have the technological capabilities to control content monitoring. It's not that they can not, they just do not want to.
We must not wait for American lawmakers;
No one will do the work for us.
It is time for Israel to rapidly advance legislation that will remove immunity from social media.
Enough of the vague rules.
We must say clearly - the value of freedom of expression does not exceed the value of human life.
If they are not ready for it, they must be removed from our lives.
