U.S. Senator Michael Bennett on Tuesday sought information on how tech giant Meta ( META.O ), Israel and Hamas operate on its platform.
“Since the beginning of the conflict, misleading content has spread on social media, sometimes receiving millions of views,” Bennett, a Democrat, said in a letter to company executives.
Visuals from old conflicts, video game footage and redacted documents are among the misleading content that has flooded social media platforms since Hamas militants attacked Israeli civilians on October 7.
“In many cases, your platform’s algorithms have amplified this content, fueling a dangerous cycle of outrage, engagement and retargeting,” Bennett said.
The senator’s comments came after EU industry chief Thierry Breton criticized companies and called for tougher measures to combat disinformation as the conflict escalates.
In his letter, Bennett asked a series of questions seeking information from the companies about their content moderation practices and asked for responses by Oct. 31.
Social media companies have outlined some of the steps they have taken in recent days in response to the conflict. Short-form video app TikTok announced that it has hired more Arabic and Hebrew-speaking content moderators. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said it had removed or flagged more than 795,000 pieces of content in Hebrew and Arabic in the first three days after the Hamas attack. Both X and Google-owned YouTube said they had also removed harmful content.
But Bennett said those measures are not enough.
“The mountain of false material clearly demonstrates that your current policies and protocols are inadequate,” he said in the letter.
Bennett also criticized the four companies for firing employees from trust and security teams responsible for curbing false and misleading content.
Bennett noted that Twitter froze 15% of its trust and safety staff and eliminated its board in November 2022 after Elon Musk bought the company, leading to layoffs last month. Bennett said Meta cut 100 similar positions in January, while Google cut team-building tools by a third to fight hate speech and misinformation online.
