Anti-Semitic vitriol in Facebook comments

PETER FELDMAN

At the centre of the storm was the Holocaust play, “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”, put on by King David High School Victory Park, at the Grads One Act Play Festival at Waterstone College on May 18.

Learners from Edenvale High School, a competing high school, began anti-Semitic chants before, during and after the staging.

“We were aware of anti-Semitic and vitriolic comments that appeared at the end of the Eyewitness News (EWN) article on their Facebook page on this topic on Saturday and Sunday,” Wendy Kahn, national director of the Jewish Board of Deputies, said.

“The comments that were made against Jews, were clearly upsetting for our community. On Sunday morning I contacted the EWN webmaster who promptly removed the entire comments section from Facebook, agreeing that ‘many of the comments contravened our comments policy.’

“Furthermore, their comments policy was re-posted with the aim that “future posts about this story do not elicit similar comments. While we are appreciative of the very swift manner in which EWN responded to our complaint, we have written to them for clarity as to their process of moderation, and why they had not picked up this hate speech earlier.

“It is the responsibility of the social media host to ensure that comments do not contain speech that is offensive, hateful and with incitement to violence.”

Katy Katapodis, head of EWN, said: “EWN covered the story of Edenvale High School pupils after it broke last week. We immediately took a decision to close comments on all related articles on the EWN website, mobisite and app due to the sensitivities around the story.”

The articles were also posted to EWN’s social media platforms, where it publishes over 100 posts per day. “On Sunday morning, it was brought to our attention that there were anti-Semitic comments posted on one of our Facebook posts,” said Katapodis.

“We acted immediately by assessing the posts and it soon became clear that the conversation had descended into one which no longer looked at the circumstances of the particular story, with some containing anti-Semitic sentiments which we believe amount to hate speech.

“Due to the vast number of comments and the possibility of more being posted long into the day, a decision was taken to take down the post immediately as it was clear the conversation was not in the spirit of meaningful contributions and it was clearly in contravention of EWN’s comments policy. Furthermore, we posted our comments policy to Facebook to remind our audience of our guidelines.”

She added: “EWN does not condone any commentary – be it on its social media platforms or website – which is racist (including offensive comments based on ethnicity and nationality), sexist, intolerant of any religious beliefs, derogatory, hate speech or incites violence. The involvement of our users in moderating conversations is something we value,” she added.

News 24 were contacted for comment regarding the allowing of anti-Semitic comments on their site and whether they had closed down all the comments posted on it, but they did not respond at the time of going to press.