JEWISH WORLD

Those Awful Online Comments Anti-Semitism seems widespread on websites these days By LIZ SPIKOL R ecently, news broke on TMZ.com that four flight attendants were suing their employer, Delta Air Lines, for dis- crimination—specifically, “a pat- tern of intentionally discriminating and retaliating against ethnically Jewish, Hebrew and/or Israeli employees and passengers.” Most of the alleged behavior took place on flights between New York City and Israel. The story was quickly picked up by other media outlets, including Newsweek , the New York Daily News , England’s Daily Mail , JTA and Times of Israel , and while the merits of the case will be decid- ed in court, the online response to the suit has been very disturbing. The first comment of the 110 left by TMZ readers said, “Palestinians for equality, kill all Jews,” and it doesn’t get much better from there. A reader with an Archie Bunker photo as his avatar writes, “Who can say with a straight face their not a pain in the you know what.” (As with the other comments men- tioned here, I am not editing them for grammar and spelling.) Another with a Harvey Weinstein avatar writes, “Delta is not anti sem- ite!…In order to make up for this misunderstanding, all Jewish employees have been given a free one way ticket to Auschwitz, Germany…” People make references to put- ting Jews in the oven, and another talks about not wanting to sit next to Jews on a plane because they smell bad. Someone with the user- name DefenderofIsrael writes, “I’m assuming they knew they were Jewish because they traveled coach and didn’t tip.” TMZ’s rules for comments include this clause: “We have a zero toler- ance policy when it comes to hate speech. This includes racist, homo- phobic, xenophobic and other com- ments containing hateful words.” Either this zero-tolerance policy has been poorly implemented in this case, or the site, which is helmed by Jewish editor Harvey Levin, does not consider anti- Semitic remarks to be hate speech. (TMZ has not returned a request for comment.) TMZ was not the only media outlet that received anti-Semitic remarks in response to the story, but it is alone in failing to remedy the situation. Newsweek and the New York Daily News seem to have barred comments on the piece from the start, while Fox News has done a fair job in moderating, despite retaining comments like, “It would be amusing if it weren’t so irritating how Jews always whine ‘anti-semitism’ every time someone fails to bow to them and shower them with money.” The Daily Mail noted that its comments have been moderated in advance, which is surely why there are no anti-Semitic remarks on their page. They’ve now disabled further reaction to the story on the website. Every online publisher faces the decision of what to do about online comments because so many of them are inevitably hateful. Some media outlets have simply decided to do away with comments alto- gether. Others either moderate in advance, or monitor comments in real time so that hate speech and personal attacks can be quickly deleted. Some publications use Facebook’s commenting plug-in, which is supposed to help cut down on the nastiness as it prevents peo- ple—in theory anyway—from hid- ing behind anonymity. Yet hateful people are remarkably determined to have their say, and will create dummy Facebook identities in order to do so. I have worked at publications where we discussed barring com- ments selectively on articles about minority communities, as the amount of hatred was too much to keep up with. I’m guessing Newsweek and the New York Daily News disabled comments on this story because they knew full well what they’d likely get in response. T here are plenty of options and tools out there for media outlets to deal with this, but TMZ—a media juggernaut with bus tours, a TV show and millions of fans worldwide—has dropped the ball here, allowing this destructive, painful conversation to thrive on their site. Some will question why it mat- ters, or even argue that it’s better to see what our enemies are thinking. I think I would have argued that a few years ago. But TMZ draws a lot of young readers to its pages, kids who are still trying to work things out about people they may not know. And such remarks are hurtful, too. Even if you tell yourself the people making them are idiots, it’s demor- alizing to read this stuff. Some people say, “So just don’t read the comments.” But it’s not always that easy. For instance, I started to play the live mobile game HQ Trivia, invented by the founders of Vine. It’s become phenomenally popular and just expanded to Android. Part of the fun of the game is that people can comment live, whether to provide help with a triv- ia question or to ask for a birthday shout-out from Jewish host Scott Rogowsky. The communal conver- sation is a big piece of what’s made the game thrive. Y et I had to stop playing the app because so many of the com- ments were about Jews. The most common seemed to be “Kill the Jews,” though swastika emojis are almost equally popular. The app does allow you to hide the live com- ments if you want, but then you’re missing out on what makes the app unique. With so many young people across the country playing this game, I wonder about the effect of this constant drumbeat of Jew hatred. COMMENTARY continued on page 19 Comments posted on online sites have become increasingly anti-Semitic, and the public must take note. JEWISH WORLD • JANUARY 26 - FEBRUARY 1, 2018 13 The first comment of the 110 left by TMZ readers said, “Palestinians for equality, kill all Jews...”