CyberWell, a nonprofit and trusted partner of Meta (Facebook, Instagram and Threads), TikTok and YouTube working to combat online antisemitism, commends the recent decision by the Meta Oversight Board (OSB) overturning Meta’s original determinations in two cases involving the use of monkey emojis 🐒 to target Black individuals with racist abuse.
In its February decision, the OSB found that the content violated Meta’s Hateful Conduct policy and called on the company to strengthen both automated and human moderation systems to address “algospeak,” including emoji-based hate. The Board further recommended auditing and regularly updating training data to improve detection of violative emoji use across languages and ensuring that content is routed to reviewers with appropriate linguistic and regional expertise. These recommendations align with CyberWell’s expert public comment submission on this issue, which analyzed the use of algospeak to target the Jewish community.
“The Oversight Board’s ruling highlights and important reality: emojis are not neutral when deployed as coded hate,” said CyberWell Founder and CEO Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor. “Algospeak has become a sophisticated tactic used to evade monitoring and moderation while promoting dehumanization and hostility toward minority communities. From what we have observed in the online universe, the popularity of algospeak has increased following the roll out of generative AI platforms and generative AI content on social media.”
As the Oversight Board recognized, contextual analysis, updated datasets and regionally informed human review are essential to countering these evolving tactics.
CyberWell’s monitoring across English- and Arabic-language platforms identified four dehumanizing archetypes of algospeak used to target Jews, including animal emojis such as 🐷, 🐀 and 🐒 comparing Jews to pigs, rats and monkeys; devil emojis such as 😈, 👿 and 👹 portraying Jews as evil or satanic; and proxy code words such as “tiny hat,” “juice,” and the juice box emoji 🧃 to circulate conspiracy theories about Jewish global control or moral corruption.
“For Meta, the next step must be operationalizing the OSB decision and translating its impact to content targeting other minority communities,” added Cohen Montemayor. “By strengthening automated systems, investing in regionally competent human moderation, auditing training data and partnering with specialized external stakeholders, Meta can ensure this decision translates into measurable impact. Addressing complex and fast-evolving forms of online hate requires sustained collaboration between platforms and expert civil society partners.”
“The risks of nefarious actors using algospeak and emoji-based coded language to evade monitoring extend beyond antisemitism online. An entire generation is growing up using algospeak and recent reporting has even highlighted its alleged use by Hamas as a covert signal to operatives ahead of the October 7, 2023, terror attack. Social media platforms and digital shorthand are being weaponized by terrorists and extremist groups for radicalization online and even to carry out attacks. Governments and the international community must keep pace by recognizing this emerging lexicon and the impact of an abused and underregulated digital infosphere,” she added.
CyberWell is an independent, tech-based nonprofit combating the spread of antisemitism online, operating globally. Its AI-technologies monitor social media in English and Arabic for posts that promulgate antisemitism, Holocaust denial and promote violence against Jews and their allies based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. Its analysts review and report this content to platform moderators while indexing all verified posts in the first-ever open database of antisemitic social media posts, cataloging it openly for transparency at app.cyberwell.org. Through partnerships, education and real-time alerts, CyberWell partners with social media platforms and digital service companies to help them enforce their policies more effectively, promoting proactive steps against online Jew-hate. For more information, visit: https://cyberwell.org/.