18 May 2021
Credit: Data: Zignal Labs; Chart: Axios Visuals
As outrage about the conflict in Gaza and misinformation about clashes between Palestinians and Israelis snowball online, social media companies face yet another test of their capacity to manage their platforms.
Why it matters: Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians haven't been this high since the last round of combat in Gaza in 2014, and social media has become a much larger part of our everyday lives and media diets since then.
Driving the news: Images from the conflict are bringing it directly onto people's phones and screens as activism spikes and some users are finding their posts removed or their accounts frozen.
- Videos of Israel's "Iron Dome" air defense intercepting rockets across the sky in Gaza circulate daily.
- The world watched as a building housing the Associated Press and Al Jazeera in Gaza was blown up by the Israeli army, citing Hamas militants inside.
Last week, a spokesman for Israel's prime minister tweeted a video purporting to show Palestinians launching rockets in a civilian area of Gaza — but the video was actually from 2018 and located elsewhere, per the New York Times.
Other widely circulated posts falsely claimed that Israeli troops had invaded Gaza.
- Some of those were prompted by official statements on Twitter and to the media from the Israeli Defense Forces suggesting that Israel had sent troops in.
- Israel later said the reports were a mistake, but some Israeli press reports said were a deliberate tactical deception.
By the numbers: New data from Zignal Labs provided to Axios shows social media support online for both sides spiked dramatically over the course of last week.
- Specifically, there's been an increase in use of the hashtags #freepalestine and #savepalestine, according to the Zignal data.
What to watch: Israeli officials charge that extremists are exploiting the situation online.
- Last week, Israel's Justice Minister, Benny Gantz, told Facebook and TikTok executives that extremists were spreading disinformation about the conflict and urged them to take action to prevent violence.
The other side: Pro-Palestinian activists have cited many instances of their content being taken down by Facebook and Instagram.
- Because Hamas, which governs Gaza, is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, some social platforms' rules — notably, Facebook's — bar posts by the group.
The big picture: The social media battlefield has become an inevitable adjunct to every international conflict.
- The Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict was a prime example late last year, with unverified or outdated videos spreading rapidly online.
Between the lines: This newest round of conflict between Palestinians and Israelis pushes social media companies onto treacherous terrain in two different ways.
- The bright line against terrorist groups gives content moderators an easy-to-apply reference point against Hamas, but for many supporters the wider Palestinian cause is a human rights issue.
- Meanwhile, angry debate over Israel's role can sometimes slide into broader slurs against Jewish people, which are forbidden by social media policies against hate speech.
Our thought bubble: This bitter conflict is decades old, and long before there was a Facebook or a Twitter, people on both sides had trouble keeping arguments about it from getting out of hand.
- Efforts to police misinformation and keep discourse civil online are most at risk when the two sides of a conflict see entirely different facts and harbor generations-old hostility.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.