ISIS, Nasrallah and Ahmad Yassin: The concepts you will not find on Facebook in Arabic

From a test conducted by the Walla!

Technology has revealed that Facebook is blocking certain Arabic searches of terrorist individuals like Hassan Nasrallah and organizations like ISIS and others. What are the processes that led Facebook to add a warning message to these?

Niv Lillian

29/04/2022

Friday, 29 April 2022, 16:00 Updated: 16:24

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Meta (Photo: Reuters)

This week, in a random check conducted on the Arabic desk of the "Walla!" System, our colleagues discovered that certain searches

, including concepts such as Zakaria Zabeidi, who was the commander of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Jenin, Hassan Nasrallah, Al-Aqsa Brigades and others on Facebook , Yield the following message:

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"The search may be related to violent, hateful or criminal activity"

We have community rules, to prevent and disrupt violent, hateful or criminal activity

when people disobey the rules, we remove content, restrict or disable their account "

At the end of the post Facebook offers the user or Return to the General News Torch, or still watch the results after being warned about their content.

"The search may be related to violent, hateful or criminal activity."

The Facebook post (Photo: Screenshot, Walla!)

At the end of the message, Facebook offers the user or return to the general news feed (Photo: screenshot, Walla!)

This post is the result of a relatively extreme action on social media and the web, known as stop search.

The goal is to prevent people from being exposed to certain content or looking for it, if it is indeed related to criminal acts, terrorism, hate speech or simply dangerous to the public (we will expand soon).

This is an action that technology companies like Facebook or Google take sparingly, but it is today a major tool in the arsenal of these companies to stop inappropriate content, which can lead to mental injury.

But this action was not born out of the void.

Can not be searched on Facebook in Arabic: Hezbollah Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah (Photo: Reuters)

Weak control in non-English speaking countries

For many years, even at congressional hearings, Facebook has been accused of not doing enough to clean up its social network of violent or inciting content.

In testimony given by whistleblowers to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Congress, as well as a series of exposures of internal documents dubbed "Facebook documents" by a number of leading media outlets in the United States, it was discovered that not only is the social network behind About 40 percent or less of them - in some cases it even duplicates the content, or simply allows their existence because it helps its profit line.

Zakaria Zbeidi - a concept that prevents hatred (Photo: Roni Kanfo)

Recall but briefly that in the past it was discovered that inciting content on Facebook, including content of terrorist movements and criminal organizations, was linked to events such as the Rohingya genocide in Minamar, recruitment of young assassins for a Mexican drug cartel that boasted about his actions on the social network In human beings for slavery.

Facebook has been accused of not doing enough to clean up the social network.

Zuckerberg at hearing (Photo: Reuters)

And even a fictitious test account created by Facebook researchers herself that carried characteristics of a woman in northern India - was immediately exposed to anti-Muslim hate speech, including what the researcher noted: "I have seen more pictures of people dead in the last three weeks than I have seen in my entire life."

"Facebook has systematically studied its overseas policies, and was well aware that weaker controls in non-English-speaking countries expose the platform to abuse by negative elements and authoritarian regimes," the Washington Post's internal documents said at the time. Assigned to the United States, although less than 10% of the network's users worldwide are Americans.

Weak control in non-English speaking countries.

Facebook (Photo: ShutterStock)

Facebook's war on terror

Which brings us back to the revelations of our colleagues at the Arabic desk this week.

Since that congressional hearing, including Frances Hagen's testimony, Facebook has in fact had no choice, due to international pressure exerted on the company on these issues, including significant steps toward legislation by the U.S. Congress, unrest that the company, which has since changed its name to Meta, dislikes.

Therefore, certain concepts in certain languages, such as well-known terrorists in the Arab world such as Zabeidi and Nasrallah, are blocked in these languages, in order to make it difficult for young people to be recruited into extremist Islamic terrorist movements such as ISIS or Hezbollah. Recruited young assassins on Facebook, probably blocked to Spanish speakers.These steps are part of Facebook's response to criticisms and revelations that have surpassed its inaction on these issues so far.

With considerable delay, Facebook has begun to address this offensive content - not even in the English language.

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• technology

• Social Networks

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• Facebook

• Meta

• Nasrallah