It has come to light that the head of Facebook's censorship division on matters relating to Israel and Palestine is none other than long-time senior Israeli government official and adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud party, Jordana Cutler.
The Intercept's Sam Biddle wrote a piece about how Cutler personally pushed for the censorship of accounts on Instagram (part of Meta) belonging to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which has played a leading role on the world stage in organizing campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza.
Officially titled as Meta's Israel & the Jewish Diaspora policy chief, Cutler used the company's content escalation channels to flag for review no fewer than four SJP posts on the platform, as well as other content questioning Israel's foreign policy.
Cutler's select policy of choice was to dub the content she wanted removed as "Dangerous Organizations and Individuals." In other words, Cutler decided that all pro-Palestine content is "dangerous" to the Israeli regime, and thus must be censored.
Meta's Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy, by the way, prevents users from freely discussing a secret list of thousands of blacklisted entities. The policy bars "glorification" of those on the blacklist through any of Meta's social media platforms, though it does supposedly still allow for "social and political discourse" as well as "commentary."
(Related: Dr. Sabine Hazan is contemplating suing Facebook for censoring her early treatment protocols for the Wuhan coronavirus [COVID-19].)
Is Facebook an Israeli operation?
While it is unknown whether or not Cutler's efforts to censor pro-Palestine content were successful – Meta refuses to say one way or another – it is clear from her hiring that Facebook is not exactly on the side of free speech.
"It screams bias," commented Marwa Fatafta, a policy adviser with the digital rights organization Access Now, which consults directly with Meta about content moderation issues.
"It doesn't really require that much intelligence to conclude what this person is up to."
The Intercept submitted a detailed list of questions to Meta about Cutler's flagging of posts, only to receive no response beyond the suggestion that writing an article about her would be "dangerous and responsible." The Intercept, of course, published an article about Cutler anyway.
"Cutler was hired by FB in 2016 as the company's first policy chief for Israel, having previously worked at the Israeli embassy, as a Likud staffer, and advisor to Netanyahu," tweeted Biddle. "In a 2020 interview she said 'My job is to represent Facebook to Israel, and represent Israel to Facebook.'"
"Internal records I reviewed show she has regularly used the company's internal escalation channel to flag pro-Palestinian content / accounts under Meta's Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy. Meta declined to comment on the outcome of these requests."
In 2020, the Jerusalem Post ran a profile of Cutler in which she was described as "Our woman at Facebook" who was hired to "represent Israel's interests on the largest and most active social network in the world."
When asked if Facebook listens to her pro-Israel voice, Cutler answered with a resounding, "of course they do."
"And I think that's one of the most exciting parts about my job," she added, "that I have an opportunity to really influence the way that we look at policy and explain things on the ground."
Biddle says he is committed to getting to the bottom of this issue, so much so that he is encouraging anyone who has any further information about it or any other issue to contact him via Signal at sambiddle.99 from a private, non-work account.
More related news can be found at Censorship.news.
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