{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://pallone.house.gov/media/press-releases/pallone-holds-roundtable-jewish-community-leaders-social-media-companies", "Pallone Holds Roundtable with Jewish Community Leaders on Social Media Companies\u2019 Failure to Contain Flood of Hate Speech, Graphic Content and Misinformation Following Hamas\u2019s Attack on Israel", "2023-12-20", "2023", "2023-12", "Democrat", "House", "NJ", "Frank Pallone, Jr.", "P000034", "pallone.house.gov", "pallone", "https://pallone.house.gov/media/press-releases", "scraper", "Edison, NJ \u2013 Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ-06) today held a roundtable with Jewish community leaders on social media companies\u2019 failure to contain violent content and misinformation following Hamas\u2019s attack on Israel. Last week, Pallone sent letters to the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube questioning how they are mitigating the proliferation of extreme, graphic, false, misleading, or harmful content in the aftermath of Hamas\u2019s October attacks and Israel\u2019s ongoing response in Gaza. Pallone sent the letters following the companies\u2019 failure to adequately respond to his initial concerns he expressed in October about the spread of violent content and misinformation.\n\n\u201cI appreciate the briefings Committee staff recently received from social media companies about the harmful content proliferating on their platforms in the aftermath of Hamas\u2019s October attacks and Israel\u2019s ongoing response in Gaza,\u201d Pallone said. \u201cWhile these meetings were helpful in most instances, I was particularly disappointed that X came with only half answers and seemed more interested in forcing users to act as unpaid content moderators rather than operating its platform responsibly.\n\n\u201cI am especially concerned that weakened trust and safety policies and increased reliance on automation over humans to monitor content undermines these companies\u2019 abilities to adequately handle sudden and complex world events,\u201d Pallone continued. \u201cThese problems are only exacerbated by company policies that intentionally amplify divisive and extreme content so they can bring in more ad dollars\u2014choosing profits over the American people. As a follow-up, I\u2019m expecting the companies to provide more comprehensive answers on their efforts to address harmful content on their platforms.\u201d\n\nAlmost every day since the attacks on October 7, 2023, there have been new reports describing how terrorist organizations and others have used social media platforms to inflict more suffering on civilians, mislead the public about the Israel-Hamas conflict, and spread hate. In other cases, users spread doctored content designed to incite outrage among the Israeli and Palestinian public.\n\nIn his letter, Pallone pointed to several examples, including:\n\nA video on X purported to show a second air assault on Israel but was later debunked as a clip from a video game;\n\nWidely-viewed images on X intended to illustrate the human toll of the war on Palestinians were later found to be from other conflict zones or disaster sites, such as Syria and Tajikistan;\n\nA video on Meta purported to show a young Israeli women being beaten by a Palestinian mob but was later revealed to be a 2015 clip depicting gang violence in Guatemala; and\n\nVideos widely-circulated on TikTok depicting Israeli victims of Hamas\u2019s massacre were revealed to be deepfakes generated through artificial intelligence.\n\nIn total, tech companies\u2014including social media giants like Meta and X\u2014have laid off over 100,000 staff, many of whom were responsible for helping provide a safer online environment.\n\nPallone demanded each platform respond to a series of questions to understand its efforts to address extreme, graphic, false, misleading, and harmful content on its platform, including:\n\nWhat company policies, manuals, or documents were designed to address violative content on your platform related to the current crisis in Israel and Gaza?\n\nHow much content relating to the crisis in Israel and Gaza has been posted to your platform since October 7, 2023, and how much has been removed for violating your trust and safety terms, and why it was removed?\n\nHow many accounts have been suspended since October 7, 2023, because of a link to a terrorist organization involved in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, including Hamas, Hezbollah, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad?\n\nWhat measures are in place to allow users to report concerns about extreme, graphic, false, misleading, and otherwise harmful content related to the crisis in the Middle East, including content that is antisemitic or Islamophobic?\n\nWhat is your policy on allowing misinformation and disinformation to remain on your platform as it relates to events in Israel and Gaza since October 7, 2023?\n\nWhat is the current composition of your content moderation workforce and procedures and what, if any, modifications has your company made to the number of human personnel reviewing content for violations of your trust and safety criteria since October 7, 2023.\n\nRead the full letter to Meta HERE.\n\nRead the full letter to TikTok HERE.\n\nRead the full letter to X HERE.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T01:14:16Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://pallone.house.gov/media/press-releases/pallone-holds-roundtable-jewish-community-leaders-social-media-companies"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4430279843509197, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}