Pallone Demands Answers from Social Media Companies for Failure to Contain Flood of Hate Speech and Graphic Content Related to the Israel-Hamas War

Washington, DC – Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ-06) sent letters to the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube today questioning how they are mitigating the proliferation of extreme, graphic, false, misleading, or harmful content in the aftermath of Hamas’s October attacks and Israel’s ongoing response in Gaza. The letters came after Committee staff met with each of the companies separately in October.

“I appreciate the briefings Committee staff recently received from social media companies about the harmful content proliferating on their platforms in the aftermath of Hamas’s October attacks and Israel’s ongoing response in Gaza,” Pallone said. “While these meetings were helpful in most instances, I was particularly disappointed that X came with only half answers and seemed more interested in forcing users to act as unpaid content moderators rather than operating its platform responsibly.

“I am especially concerned that weakened trust and safety policies and increased reliance on automation over humans to monitor content undermines these companies’ abilities to adequately handle sudden and complex world events,” Pallone continued. “These problems are only exacerbated by company policies that intentionally amplify divisive and extreme content so they can bring in more ad dollars—choosing profits over the American people. As a follow-up, I’m expecting the companies to provide more comprehensive answers on their efforts to address harmful content on their platforms.”

Almost every day since the attacks on October 7, 2023, there have been new reports describing how terrorist organizations and others have used social media platforms to inflict more suffering on civilians, mislead the public about the Israel-Hamas conflict, and spread hate. In other cases, users spread doctored content designed to incite outrage among the Israeli and Palestinian public.

In his letter, Pallone pointed to several examples, including:

• A video on X purported to show a second air assault on Israel but was later debunked as a clip from a video game;
• Widely-viewed images on X intended to illustrate the human toll of the war on Palestinians were later found to be from other conflict zones or disaster sites, such as Syria and Tajikistan;
• A video on Meta purported to show a young Israeli women being beaten by a Palestinian mob but was later revealed to be a 2015 clip depicting gang violence in Guatemala; and
• Videos widely-circulated on TikTok depicting Israeli victims of Hamas’s massacre were revealed to be deepfakes generated through artificial intelligence.

In total, tech companies—including social media giants like Meta and X—have laid off over 100,000 staff, many of whom were responsible for helping provide a safer online environment.

Pallone demanded each platform respond to a series of questions to understand its efforts to address extreme, graphic, false, misleading, and harmful content on its platform, including:

• What company policies, manuals, or documents were designed to address violative content on your platform related to the current crisis in Israel and Gaza?
• How much content relating to the crisis in Israel and Gaza has been posted to your platform since October 7, 2023, and how much has been removed for violating your trust and safety terms, and why it was removed?
• How many accounts have been suspended since October 7, 2023, because of a link to a terrorist organization involved in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, including Hamas, Hezbollah, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad?
• What measures are in place to allow users to report concerns about extreme, graphic, false, misleading, and otherwise harmful content related to the crisis in the Middle East, including content that is antisemitic or Islamophobic?
• What is your policy on allowing misinformation and disinformation to remain on your platform as it relates to events in Israel and Gaza since October 7, 2023?
• What is the current composition of your content moderation workforce and procedures and what, if any, modifications has your company made to the number of human personnel reviewing content for violations of your trust and safety criteria since October 7, 2023.

Read the full letter to Meta HERE.

Read the full letter to TikTok HERE.

Read the full letter to X HERE.

Read the full letter to YouTube HERE.