Jordana Cutler, also a former senior Israeli official, “used the company’s content escalation channels” to flag for review at least four SJP posts and other content critical of Israel.
Meta’s Israel policy chief advocated for the censorship of Instagram accounts belonging to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group that has played a key role in campus protests against Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, The Intercept has reported.
Jordana Cutler, also a former senior Israeli official, “used the company’s content escalation channels” to flag for review at least four SJP posts and other content critical of Israel’s foreign policy for review, the report said.
A former senior Israeli government official now working as Meta’s Israel policy chief personally pushed for the censorship of Instagram accounts belonging to Students for Justice in Palestine. https://t.co/1WXHdKdgk6
— The Intercept (@theintercept) October 21, 2024
“When flagging SJP posts, Cutler repeatedly invoked Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy, which bars users from freely discussing a secret list of thousands of blacklisted entities,” The Intercept added.
The Dangerous Organizations policy restricts the “glorification” of blacklisted entities but is intended to permit “social and political discourse” and “commentary.”
It remains unclear whether Cutler’s efforts to leverage Meta’s internal censorship system were successful, as the company declined to disclose the outcome of the flagged posts, the report said.
‘It Screams Bias’
While Cutler does not make final decisions on censorship, with another team handling moderation, experts told The Intercept that they are concerned about a senior employee representing a government’s interests pushing to restrict content that opposes those interests.
Marwa Fatafta, a policy adviser with the digital rights organization Access Now, said “It screams bias.”
“It doesn’t really require that much intelligence to conclude what this person is up to,” Fatafta added.
American-Israeli settler colonist and former Netanyahu advisor Jordana Cutler says she removes any content from Meta that “makes Jews feel unsafe” – meaning anything that interferes with Zionist propaganda objectives – while enforcing a regime of Gaza Holocaust denial https://t.co/7CrHXcl3wr
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) October 22, 2024
The Intercept said Meta did not respond to The Intercept’s questions about Cutler’s actions.
Instead, company spokeswoman Dani Lever defended the platform’s review process, stating, “Who flags a particular piece of content for review is irrelevant because our policies govern what is and isn’t allowed on platform.” Meta argued that writing an article about Cutler was “dangerous and irresponsible.”
Netanyahu’s Advisor
According to the Intercept, Cutler joined Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, in 2016 “after years of high-level work in the Israeli government.”
The report said her resumé includes working several years at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., both in public affairs and as its chief of staff from 2013 to 2016. She was also a campaign adviser for the right-wing Likud party “and nearly five years as an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
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Meta’s Israel policy chief pushed for censorship of Instagram accounts belonging to Students for Justice in Palestine, The Intercept reports.
“Upon her hiring in 2016, Gilad Erdan, then minister of public security, strategic affairs and information, celebrated the move, saying it marked ‘an advance in dialogue between the State of Israel and Facebook’,” the report said.
(Anadolu, PC)
