Google Denies Deal With Israel To Police YouTube For Incitement
Image by Getty Images
Google has denied an Israeli government claim that it has agreed to jointly monitor YouTube videos that incite attacks on Israelis.
Google, which owns YouTube, denied that it had made such an agreement at a meeting last week of the company’s executives with Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely.
A statement about the meeting released by the ministry last week, which remains on its website, quoted Hotovely as saying, “We are engaged daily in confronting incitement to violence, a task which can benefit greatly from the cooperation of those companies that are involved in social media.”
The announcement of an agreement to jointly monitor inciting videos was removed from the statement, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman told the French news agency AFP.
Hotovely, who met with Google’s senior counsel for public policy, Juniper Downs, and YouTube chief executive Susan Wojcicki, was briefed on the companies’ system for identifying video clips that incite to violence, according to the statement.
A Google spokesman told AFP Monday that the meeting was just “one of many that we have with policymakers from different countries to explain our policies on controversial content, flagging and removals.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
