Israel makes Facebook and Twitter remove 70% pro-Palestinian content

Following the Israel government’s demands, nearly 70 percent of pro-Palestinian content has been removed from social networking site Facebook and micro-blogging website Twitter, media reports said on Monday. “We succeeded to achieve our goals as around 70 percent of our demands were fulfilled,” Israeli Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked told Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, TeleSUR TV reported. The decision was taken as “there is a direct relationship" between internet incitement and violence in Israel. “We succeeded to delete incitement contents calling for death and violence across the internet,” the minister added. “It is not uncommon for Israel to use social media and freedom of expression as a means of controlling viewpoints from being expressed globally,” the Palestine Chronicle wrote. Facebook and Twitter have put in a number of mechanisms to report offensive content on the websites. According to Facebook, any profile, page or group related to a terrorist organisation is shut down and any content celebrating terrorism is removed as part of the social netwoking sites’s policy. IANS