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Friday, April 01, 2022

Whistleblower: YouTube knowingly allows Arabic antisemitic jihadist videos to stay online - and the Texas gunman watched them

Whistleblower Khaled Hassan

This is a bombshell report from TheJC (which does perhaps the best reporting of any Jewish newspaper):

YouTube routinely ignored warnings from its own moderators to take down antisemitic videos, including some that inspired the Texas synagogue gunman, a whistleblower has told the JC.

The refusal to delete the incendiary footage, which glorifies terrorism and brands Jews “agents of Satan”, makes a mockery of the web giant’s supposed commitment to safeguarding users, the whistleblower said.

Former moderator Khaled Hassan, 31, who was employed to identify extremism in Arabic language videos until two months ago, accuses YouTube of “shirking its legal and moral responsibilities”.

In shocking testimony, the whistleblower reveals: 

- YouTube ignored warnings that specific videos would incite violence against Jews, just weeks before British terrorist Malik Faisal Akram watched the same clips and took four hostages at Beth Israel synagogue in Texas.

- YouTube ignored requests to remove videos by Wagdy Ghoneim, a leading Egyptian jihadist who is banned in the UK, on the grounds that he was not on an internal watchlist of just 29 names.

- Mr Hassan was told that when he wished to “flag” any video about the Middle East conflict, he should seek approval from a Palestinian colleague.

- The whistleblower was moved to a more menial job because, he claimed, he highlighted videos that YouTube did not want to remove.

- The social media giant refused to delete clips celebrating the November murder of Jerusalem tour guide Eli Kay because they did not display the logo of a terrorist organisation.

...Mr Hassan, 31, a counter-terrorism expert who spent years fighting extremism in Egypt before achieving a master’s degree in security policy at Leicester University, told the JC: “YouTube’s policy is a sham. They claim they will remove content that glorifies terrorism and contains racist hate speech, but what they do behind the veil of company secrecy is very different.

“They are shirking their legal and moral responsibilities. They tell users that their platform is safe. In fact, they are allowing people to be radicalised and reinforcing claims that Jews are evil and rule the world.”  

This is more than just being irresponsible. YouTube, and Google, are arguably accessories to terrorism. 

The part where Google told Hassan that Palestinians must approve removing any jihadist video about Israel is especially insane. Terrorism enjoys wide popular support among Palestinians.

In other words, they allow people who overwhelmingly hate Jews to decide what is antisemitic incitement. 

This means that the Palestinian propaganda that "Zionists" are silencing them has real-world consequences. It causes Google and other social media to err on the side of the terrorists and wannabe jihadists when dealing with antisemitic propaganda, rather than prioritize the lives of Jews.

(h/t Brad)


 



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