Washington, D.C., May 7, 2018 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today issued a new report analyzing anti-Semitic speech on Twitter, providing the first-ever snapshot of the trends and themes of anti-Semitism on the social media platform over the course of a one-year period.
Using proprietary research strategies to evaluate Twitter for thousands of possible anti-Semitic expressions, including classic stereotypes, code words, symbols and conspiracy theories, and conducting a human…
605 Results
By Brittan Heller | Director for Technology and Society May 02, 2018 WIRED When he testified before Congress last month, FacebookCEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed the problem of using artificial intelligence to identify online hate speech. He said he was optimistic that in five to 10 years, “We will have AI tools that can get into some of the linguistic nuances of different types of content to be more accurate in flagging content for our systems, but today we&rsquo…
Will innovate in fields such as bot research, video games, virtual reality, and augmented reality to reduce cyberhate and protect civil rights New York, April 26, 2018 … The Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Technology and Society (CTS) has selected an Oxford scholar who works with Google; a leading expert on games and emerging media; and an ordained Episcopal minister working in diverse communities in Chicago as its inaugural class of Belfer Fellows.
The Belfer Fellowship…
by: Jonathan Greenblatt | April 17, 2018 The Times of Israel On May 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion stood on a podium at the Tel Aviv Museum and announced the establishment of the State of Israel with a booming recitation of a Declaration of Independence.
When Ben Gurion made this dramatic declaration, few would have guaranteed that this fledgling state, surrounded by hostile armies, would survive seven decades, much less develop and thrive into a modern, diverse, dynamic and…
New York, NY, April 20, 2018 ... The following is a statement from Brittan Heller, director of ADL’s Center for Technology and Society, in response to a CNN report that found retail brands’ advertising running on YouTube channels promoting white nationalists, Nazis, pedophiles and other extremist views.
It's unfortunate but not surprising to see this type of hateful content appear in this way on YouTube. This is an ongoing problem with the lack of understanding in terms of…
The following letter was submitted to The New York Times in response to "Israel Courts Catastrophe in Gaza Protests" (April 2, 2018) Letters to the Editor
The New York Times
To the Editor:
Re "Israel Courts Catastrophe in Gaza Protests" (Editorial, April 2, 2018):
There are legitimate issues to be raised concerning Israel's policy vis-a-vis Hamas and Gaza, including the issue of access of the population to the outside world and the extent of the use of force…
New York, NY, March 8, 2018.....The Anti-Defamation League today reacted to the White House meeting with members of Congress, top executives from the gaming industry, and various parent groups to discuss violence in video games.
“Based on what we know about the meeting, the conversation failed to include any discussion of how video games and emerging technologies can be used to actively fight bias and hate. The violence we’ve seen across the country comes in part…
Initiative Will Collect Fresh Ideas to Combat Evolving Technology Challenges New York, NY, March 8, 2018 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL)’s Center for Technology and Society (CTS) is expanding its work with a new fellowship program that will amplify the work of cutting-edge researchers and practitioners at the intersection of tech and civil rights.
The new Belfer Fellowship program is the newest initiative from CTS, which ADL opened last year to bring a new focus to ensuring…
February 28, 2018 The Iranian Javan (young) website published an article on February 13, 2018 which demonstrates the Islamic Republic’s consistent use of anti-Semitic tropes to promote the regime’s entrenched hostility towards Israel. The piece appears at a time of growing tensions between Iran and Israel and within Iranian society, and feeds into long utilized conspiracy theories propagated by the Islamic Republic about Israel and Jews, as well as their demonization of Western…
New York, NY, February 27, 2018 … Following is a statement from Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt in response to news that YouTube would not take down anti-Semitic videos from the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division that call for gassing Jews and a “race war”:
Just today we released a report showing a 60% increase in anti-Semitic incidents over the past year, and we know this type of material only contributes to that. These videos are not only…
January 10, 2018 By Brittan Heller | Director of the Center for Technology and Society & Aaron Sussman | Associate National Civil Rights Counsel
It was a hoax turned deadly. On the evening of December 28, a distressed-sounding man called the police in Wichita, Kansas, and confessed that he had shot his father in the head, was holding his mother and sibling hostage, and had poured gasoline in the house, threatening to set it on fire. He then gave the police his address.
…
by: Jonathan Greenblatt | January 09, 2018 JTA Several recent political measures in Israel — including announcements by Israel’s parliament, attorney general and ruling party — have significantly begun to undermine the possibility of achieving a two-state solution.
Let me be clear: When discussing why the peace process has been stalled for so many years, one has to begin with the Palestinians. There is little evidence to suggest that the Palestinians have yet made the…
New York, NY, January 4, 2018 ... Facebook has removed a disgusting and highly controversial anti-Semitic page that has been on its platform for at least five years. The page peddled one of the worst anti-Jewish conspiracies from medieval times: Jewish ritual murder of non-Jews.
Said Jonathan Greenblatt, Anti-Defamation League CEO and National Director:
“We have been calling for the removal of this hateful, anti-Semitic Facebook page since 2014. It’s long overdue that…
December 19, 2017 Following Monday's implementation of new safety rules on Twitter, a number of users associated with white supremacy and other hateful ideologies found themselves no longer allowed on the platform.
"ADL commends Twitter for taking these significant steps to tackle hate on their platform. We long urged Twitter to push back against hateful and violent rhetoric, and these latest actions are encouraging," CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. …
December 11, 2017 President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was widely condemned by Arab governments. Arabic-language media followed suit, and some outlets even used the historic declaration to propagate anti-Semitic cartoons relating to Jews, Jerusalem, and/or U.S.-Israel relations. In some instances, these cartoons suggest that Israel controls or dominates U.S. foreign policy, for example depicting U.S. President Donald Trump as a puppet operated by Israeli…
December 08, 2017 All online platforms with user-generated content struggle with how best to moderate that content.The stakes are especially high when the platform is exclusively aimed at young children.
This is something YouTube, whose parent company Google is part of ADL’s Problem-Solving Lab, learned in a particularly disturbing way, as the young viewers of its popular YouTube Kids app were suddenly exposed to videos of their favorite characters suffering grisly deaths,…
New ADL report finds hate groups are still poorly funded, but look to crowdfunding, cryptocurrency, other tools New York, NY, December 5, 2017 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is calling on credit card companies and online crowdfunding sites to more closely monitor white supremacists’ compliance with their terms of services and policies in light of a new report highlighting how racists exploit online platforms to raise money for their racist “cause.”
Funding Hate…
November 30, 2017 November 24 witnessed the deadliest terror attack in Egypt’s history when gunmen detonated explosives at a Sufi mosque in the Sinai Peninsula and then sprayed the worshippers with bullets, killing more than 300 people and wounding more than 100. While no organization claimed responsibility for the attack, it is thought to have been carried out by local militants affiliated with the Islamic State.
Sufism, a branch of Islam, is a minority regarded by the Islamic…
November 27, 2017 By Mark Pitcavage, Senior Research Fellow for the Center on Extremism
Many subjects are difficult to report on, but extremist and fringe movements are particularly difficult landscapes for journalists to navigate, strewn with rough terrain and the occasional landmine. As someone who has monitored right-wing extremism for more than two decades, I’ve had the pleasure of reading many fine works of journalism on extremist-related subjects, but I’ve also seen…
New York, NY, November 16, 2017 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) praised Twitter’s decision to remove verification badges for a number of prominent white supremacists and other figures linked to the alt right, calling the move “an important step in the right direction.”
Twitter’s new policy reserves the right to remove verification at any time without notice for various reasons, including “promoting hate and/or violence against, or directly attacking…