Minister Shaked: Facebook complied with 95% of govt. removal requests
Justice Minister addresses topic of removal of inciting material from social media while speaking at the 16th World Summit of the International Institute for Counter Terrorism; '2016-model terrorism needs to be met with a 2016-model response.'
According to Yedioth Ahronoth (Ynet's sister publication), Israel has filed 158 removal-of-content requests with the social media giant Facebook, and 13 removal requests from video-sharing and streaming site YouTube (owned by Google). Facebook has complied with 95 percent of the government's requests, while YouTube has complied with 80 percent.
The minister, however, said that the war against online incitement is far from over. "This is an impressive statistic, but we understand that the quantity of incitement on the web is much greater, and we need to continue and increase our efforts, and this we will do," promised Shaked. "The pages that were removed at our request were receiving widespread circulation all the time, and each moment they were on the air they (were getting) additional shares, comments, and 'likes'—so such a page of incitement is in fact a continual 'growth engine' for terrorism if it's not cut down. Erasing pages identified with terror organizations has, as far as we are concerned, brought about satisfactory results."
Shaked added, "In the past few years, with the development of social networks, (another kind) of warfare – digital warfare – has been added (to the battlefield), and we need to cut terrorism from another one of its 'oxygen tubes': Incitement on social media. Digital and economic warfare are no less important than the militarily fight against terrorism. The Ministry of Justice, headed by myself, is at the helm of the fight (in these two arenas). 2016-model terrorism needs to be met with a 2016-model response."
Tova Tzimuki, Reut Rimmerman, Asaf Zagrizak, and Roi Yanovsky contributed to this report.
