Facebook failed to tackle hate posts against Israel

Social media has repeatedly come under scrutiny for hosting hate speeches and comments on their platform. Now the government ministers in Israel have accused Facebook of failing to tackle "inciteful" posts against the country on the social network.

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked wants social media companies to pre-emptively remove content that Israel considers to be a security threat. Shaked has said that threatening content must be manually reported by the website's users before any action can be taken.

"We want the companies... to remove posts by terrorist groups and incitement to terrorism without us having to flag each individual post, in just the same manner, for example, that they today do not allow posts and pages with child pornography," Shaked was reported as saying to Israel's Army Radio.

Facebook in response said "We call on people to use our report tool if they find the content they believe violates these rules so that we can examine each case and take quick action. We work regularly with safety organisations and policymakers around the world, including Israel, to ensure that people know how to make safe use of Facebook. There is no room for content that promotes violence, direct threats, and terrorist or hate speeches on our platform."

In 2015, Facebook complied with a Turkish court order demanding the blocking of a page it said offended the Prophet Muhammad. The court had threatened to block the entire website if the social media platform had refused.