Enabling Social Media

"The victims' blood is partially on Facebook's hands. Facebook has turned into a monster. The younger generation in the Palestinian Authority runs its entire discourse of incitement and lies and finally goes out to commit murderous acts on Facebook's platform."
"The Taraiyre case is a classic example. [The Facebook posts] should have been monitored in time, and [the murder] should have been averted. Facebook has all the tools to do this. It is the only entity that, at this stage, can monitor such a tremendous quantity of materials. It does it all the time for marketing purposes. The time has come for Facebook to do the same thing to save lives."

Israel's Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan

"We are talking about a state [metaphor for Facebook] with a billion and a half citizens [Facebook users]. It is impossible to keep them all under surveillance. Imagine that you in Israel tried to banish everyone who thinks or talks or writes differently."
"[Facebook works] regularly with safety organizations and policy-makers around the world, including Israel, to ensure that people know how to make a safe use of Facebook."
"There is no room for content that promotes violence, direct threats, terrorist or hate speeches on our platform." 

Facebook executives

"The way to deal with the tremendous quantities of material, is via profiling. Preliminary examination is made of the web, in the same format as in airports. The system needs to focus on problematic regions, dangerous age groups and problematic populations in order to do a preliminary filtering of millions of posts and pieces of correspondence. We’re [IDF special interception services] not there yet, but we’ll get there in the end."

Israel Defense Forces' intelligence services

A caricature by Hasan Abadi encourages Palestinians to stab Israeli soldiers [Facebook image]

The influence and ubiquitous nature and reliance upon social-media network colossi like Twitter, Facebook and Google is enormous, particularly among the young, particularly those devoted to an ideology. As conduits for groups delivering messages to one another they far outperform any other communication device ever devised for their ability to reach enormous numbers of people instantly. They now function as platforms for political activism, and to promote terror.

Facebook claims it has engaged in an effort to manage the type of images posted by terrorist groups and online weapons bazaars in an effort to be a good corporate citizen. Yet when one of its top representatives visiting Israel states serenely that it's possible to equate those "who think or talk or write 'differently'" with the flouting of basic human rights and the flaunting of grisly images of atrocities that repel most human beings, but appeal to the psychopathic instincts of Islamist jihadis, one can only wonder how seriously they take the issue.

Facebook has been sued, in a new approach to attempt to persuade social-media giants of their social and humanitarian responsibilities, by a youth group of French Jews. The group also sued Twitter Inc. and Google Inc. over their monitoring of hate speech, or lack thereof. Joining in the chorus are governments around the world, themselves calling on the companies to become responsibly involved in the battle against global terrorism.

According to Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett, himself formerly involved in  high-tech as an entrepreneur -- with the use of a simple algorithm, Facebook has the means of blocking videos that incite to murder. A senior Israeli security figure, speaking anonymously, explained the problem resides in the response when a Facebook post contains inciting material or stated intentions to carry out a terror attack.

That's when Israeli authorities ask Facebook for the IP address of the poster, a logical enough request to help authorities crack down and stop the attack from being carried forward. However, when the location becomes known and it turns out to be the Palestinian cities of Ramallah or Qalqilya, for example, Facebook goes no further in its investigation since the post originates "outside of Israel’s area of jurisdiction".

And if that isn't a concession to standing by and demonstrating the banality of evil, what is?