Two Years After October 7th, Cyberwell Urges Social Media Companies To Reverse Decline In Moderation As Threats Flourish

Rather than acting on the lessons of October 7th, CyberWell says, many platforms have scaled back the very safeguards that could help prevent the next wave of online-fueled terrorism. The call comes as a $1 billion civil lawsuit filed in Israel by victims of the October 7th attacks, and their families, against Meta advances in court. The landmark case alleges that Meta enabled repeated broadcasts of executions and kidnappings by Hamas and failed to act on credible warnings. If granted approval as a class action suit in Israeli courts, there could be an international opening for families of victims of terror to join in suing Meta for pain and suffering caused by the unbridled broadcasting of the Hamas massacre and kidnapping on that day and in the months following.

“What happened on October 7th should have been a turning point for safety, like the Sept. 11 attacks were for public security and for the air travel industry,” said CyberWell Founder and CEO Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor. “Instead, in the last two years we have witnessed a retreat from the very tools and safeguards that could have prevented the spread of graphic executions, incitement to violence and digital antisemitism. This is not just a content policy issue. It is a national security imperative.”

CyberWell’s data shows that the October 7th attacks exposed systemic moderation failures on platforms such as Meta and X, where livestreams and video uploads of terrorist acts were widely distributed and amplified by algorithms designed to maximize engagement. Since then, many platforms have removed automated flagging systems, reduced human moderation teams and weakened transparency around algorithmic amplification and enforcement.

“The tools are there. The expertise is there,” said Cohen Montemayor. “Every day, platforms scan billions of posts to detect and remove child pornography and copyright infringement using advanced digital fingerprinting, hashing and AI classification. These same tools could stop the viral spread of terror content and recorded graphic violence.”

Since October 2023, CyberWell has monitored and flagged thousands of instances of violent antisemitic content, including praise for the terrorist attacks and dehumanizing conspiracy theories that have led to real-world violence against Jewish communities in the United States, Europe, and Australia. The normalization of digital antisemitism continues to drive a dangerous feedback loop: violence is recorded, broadcasted algorithmically, celebrated and repeated. Recent attacks on Jewish communities and political pundits have followed this same pattern of online radicalization and incitement.

“Social Media companies have shown they can act decisively when the stakes are high for them. Their ability to rapidly remove child pornography and enforce copyright law proves scalable, precise moderation is possible,” said Cohen Montemayor. “Perhaps the landmark lawsuit in Israel against Meta will create an incentive structure needed to push platforms toward meaningful investment in public-private partnerships and trust-tech solutions that proactively prevent hate speech, incitement and radicalization.”

“This is not just about protecting Jewish communities,” she added. “It is about ensuring the digital public square does not continue to erode social stability and serve as a staging ground for extremist violence.”

CyberWell is an independent, internationally focused, tech-rooted nonprofit combating the spread of antisemitism online. Its AI-technologies monitor social media in English and Arabic for posts that promulgate antisemitism, Holocaust denial and promote violence against Jews 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 – democratically cataloging it for transparency at: app.cyberwell.org. Through partnerships, education and real-time alerts, CyberWell is holding social media platforms and their moderators accountable, promoting proactive steps against online Jew-hate. For more information, visit: https://cyberwell.org/.