Anti-Israel Websites See a Surge in Popularity, Raising Concerns That ‘Antisemites Control the Web’

“Do antisemites control the web?” That’s the question being asked by a search engine specialist in a new report disclosing a surge in internet traffic to antisemitic websites since October 7. Google search results have seen a 63 percent surge in traffic to websites listed by the Anti-Defamation League in 2013 as the most anti-Israel groups in America, many of them responsible for the anti-Israel protests that have taken hold of cities across the country in recent months. That figure is much higher than the traffic to sites that support the Jewish state. Web traffic to those is up only 8 percent, and only 9 percent to sites that are merely affiliated with Israel.These trends do not suggest a “any sort of conscious or nefarious manipulation by Google,” the search engine marketer who compiled the data, Mordy Oberstein, said in his report, but it does disclose “a dearth of pro-Israel/pro-Jewish content out there with which to counter the antisemitic material.”Mr. Oberstein assessed web traffic by determining how often a search is conducted for a specific keyword and the ranking position of the web address among Google results.Take the website for the group, United States Campaign for Palestinian Rights, which says it believes that “freedom for the Palestinian people is an integral part of achieving our collective liberation.” Organic web traffic to the site skyrocketed in recent weeks, from under 1,000 visits to roughly 9,700, a surge which began in December. Meanwhile, the Jewish activist organization, Jewish Voices for Peace, drew on average 2,500 visitors from Google each month prior to October 7, a figure that has since risen to 8,500. JVP’s students chapters have led pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas protests at college campuses across the country in a show of support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.Google search results themselves are skewed against the Jewish state. When one looks up “infants killed in Israel” on Google, the featured snippet that comes up first in the search results cites “over 10,000 infants and children killed in Israel’s Gaza genocide.” That fatality claim, lacking any links or citations to verify it, comes from the website of Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, whose leaders appeared on a list of Hamas’ “main operatives and institutions” in Europe.Google develops an algorithmic profile for a topic based on the content that’s already been published about it online. The concern outlined by Mr. Oberstein is that Google’s machine learning will build its understanding of Israel based on the proliferation of antisemitic content taking over the internet.

Anti-Israel Websites See a Surge in Popularity, Raising Concerns That ‘Antisemites Control the Web’

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