Signaled Virtue

I had long sworn off any form of social media, but for my own professional development, I have regretfully continued to use LinkedIn.

Across the platform since the war began, I have seen just as much truthful coverage of the war as I have seen false coverage. This is refreshing given that the CCP-owned platform TikTok shows far more lies than truth.

Yet, I have noticed from LinkedIn (and from Instagram through others) a tendency in content moderation to only attack the most egregious and obvious examples of hate speech, misinformation, and deceit. The more subtle examples are routinely protected. In my personal experience reporting every post that former friends and classmates have unfortunately been duped by, all except one have not been removed.

This content includes descriptions of Israel’s actions in Gaza as war crimes (having learned international law as pertains to this issue in my education, this is provably false), obviously-staged videos emerging from the region, and other portrayals of Israel and Jewish people as evil entities who are attempting to exterminate the Palestinian people.

These statements are not taken down. The ones which are taken down are statements to the effect of “Zionism is evil,” and similar less subtle versions of hatred. Yet these statements are precisely the ones that are least likely to have an adverse effect on the lives of Jewish people, and the image of Israel, in the public eye, precisely because it is so obviously biased and hateful.

By allowing the more insidious forms of antisemitism to flourish on the platform, LinkedIn and friends actually make the problem worse by making it seem as if the antisemitism which does remain on the platform cannot be related to the antisemitism which is removed. In other words, LinkedIn is sanitizing the antisemitism of its members and in doing so making it more palatable for the average Joe.

The unevenness of this response may actually increase online radicalization as opposed to decreasing it!

Also, a lot of the language which is sustained on these platforms clouds itself in a veneer of social justice, using terms like “humanitarian” and “indiscriminate” even when not applicable to the situation, whereas the language removed doesn’t conform to those vocabularies. Extremists are taking advantage of the good faith that younger generations placed in social justice movements, such as Black Lives Matter, in order to gain audience with them. Sometimes, the invocation of this language is enough to convert them, at least into the early stages. As they continue to explore it, the radicalization will deepen, and they will become far more traditionally antisemitic.

I have one point wondered if it would be appropriate to specifically require high school courses in critical thinking for all students. At the time I thought it was useful not only in the age of digital media and extreme political polarization, but because cults tend to take advantage of exactly the weakness which critical thinking diminishes. Now it is too late, and Jews can only rely on these platforms to suppress lies and hate speech from infecting others. It is clear that is failing too.

We live in very interesting times.