Iron Truth members have flagged thousands of posts for removal, from clearly racist or false content to posts that are merely sympathetic to Palestinians.
The brainchild of Dani Kaganovitch, a Tel Aviv-based software engineer at Google, Iron Truth claims its tech industry back channels have led to the removal of roughly 1,000 posts tagged by its members as false, antisemitic, or “pro-terrorist” across platforms such as X, YouTube, and TikTok.
While content moderation trigger-happiness around mere mentions of designated terror organizations has led to undue censorship of Palestinian and other Middle Eastern users, Big Tech policies on misinformation are, on paper, much more conservative.
“It’s really hard to identify disinformation,” Kaganovitch acknowledged in an interview, conceding that what’s considered a conspiracy today might be corroborated tomorrow, and pointing to a recent Haaretz report that an Israel Defense Forces helicopter may have inadvertently killed Israelis on October 7 in the course of firing at Hamas.
Even the words “Israel lied” were suggested to Iron Truth volunteers on the grounds that they could be used in “false posts.” On October 16, two days after an Israeli airstrike killed 70 Palestinians evacuating from northern Gaza, one Telegram group member shared a TikTok containing imagery of one of the bombed convoys.
Links to similar allegations of Israeli war crimes from figures such as popular Twitch streamer Hasan Piker; Colombian President Gustavo Petro; psychologist Gabor Maté; and a variety of obscure, ordinary social media users have received the same treatment.
Chat transcripts show many Iron Truth volunteers conflating Palestinian advocacy with material support for Hamas or characterizing news coverage as “misinformation” or “disinformation,” perennially vague terms whose meaning is further diluted in times of war and crisis.
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The brainchild of Dani Kaganovitch, a Tel Aviv-based software engineer at Google, Iron Truth claims its tech industry back channels have led to the removal of roughly 1,000 posts tagged by its members as false, antisemitic, or “pro-terrorist” across platforms such as X, YouTube, and TikTok.
While content moderation trigger-happiness around mere mentions of designated terror organizations has led to undue censorship of Palestinian and other Middle Eastern users, Big Tech policies on misinformation are, on paper, much more conservative.
“It’s really hard to identify disinformation,” Kaganovitch acknowledged in an interview, conceding that what’s considered a conspiracy today might be corroborated tomorrow, and pointing to a recent Haaretz report that an Israel Defense Forces helicopter may have inadvertently killed Israelis on October 7 in the course of firing at Hamas.
Even the words “Israel lied” were suggested to Iron Truth volunteers on the grounds that they could be used in “false posts.” On October 16, two days after an Israeli airstrike killed 70 Palestinians evacuating from northern Gaza, one Telegram group member shared a TikTok containing imagery of one of the bombed convoys.
Links to similar allegations of Israeli war crimes from figures such as popular Twitch streamer Hasan Piker; Colombian President Gustavo Petro; psychologist Gabor Maté; and a variety of obscure, ordinary social media users have received the same treatment.
Chat transcripts show many Iron Truth volunteers conflating Palestinian advocacy with material support for Hamas or characterizing news coverage as “misinformation” or “disinformation,” perennially vague terms whose meaning is further diluted in times of war and crisis.
The original article contains 3,856 words, the summary contains 258 words. Saved 93%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!