By Chris Menahan – Information Liberation
TikTok, which is still facing being banned at any moment by the US, has hired former Israeli Defense Forces instructor Erica Mindel to “develop and drive the company’s positions on hate speech” with a focus on combatting “antisemitism.”
TikTok recently hired a new hate speech manager with long-standing ties to the Jewish community, the company confirmed to Jewish Insider, as the social media platform faces growing pressure to confront a sharp rise in antisemitic content.
The streaming platform enlisted Erica Mindel, a former State Department contractor who worked for Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the Biden administration’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, to join TikTok’s global public policy and government affairs team.
[…] In her newly created role, Mindel will “develop and drive the company’s positions on hate speech,” seek to “influence legislative and regulatory frameworks” and “analyze hate speech trends,” with a particular focus on “antisemitic content,” among other duties cited in an official job description shared by TikTok.Mindel, who previously served as an assistant director of program development at the American Jewish Committee, according to her LinkedIn profile, had briefly worked for the special envoy’s office in the second Trump administration before she was hired by TikTok, the company told JI.
Mindel declined to comment on her new position, which was first reported by The Washington Free Beacon.
The role was initiated after a “high-level convening” the Anti-Defamation League “helped organize last year,” said Dan Granot, the ADL’s national director of antisemitism policy, who in a statement to JI on Sunday said the position was raised as “a key recommendation for all social media platforms” during the meeting.
“In a moment when too many social media platforms are scaling back efforts to fight hate, ADL welcomes TikTok’s establishment of a role focused specifically on hate speech and antisemitism,” Granot added, praising Mindel as a “trusted partner who understands the issue and the stakes, and someone we’ve worked with closely in the fight against online hate.”
“The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $178,200 – $330,480 annually,” the job listing notes.
Mindel in 2021, in a video for the American Jewish Committee, described how she left America to make Aliyah in Israel and join the IDF.
Mindel highlighted her history of Jewish ethnic activism and rich “Zionist identity” and noted that after graduating from college, “I made Aliyah and enlisted in the Israeli Defense Forces.”
“I spent the next two years serving as a madrichat shirion, an instructor in the Armored Corps,” Mindel said.
“For many, this might seem like a contradiction,” she said. “For a woman who identifies as liberal and progressive to be a Zionist so committed as to join the IDF?”
“For me, these two identities go hand in hand,” Mindel said. “My American Israeli Jewish progressive identity is complex and layered, and it’s full of rich Jewish values.”
“I’m a proud American Jew,” she said.
Last year, Mindel reportedly took part in a private meeting with the Center for Countering Digital Hate — the group that sought to “Kill [Elon] Musk’s Twitter.”
“Attendees at CCDH’s private event included a slew of liberal groups now organizing against Musk including a senior advisor at the White House, a Democratic Party staffer in the office of Congressman Adam Schiff, Biden/Harris State Department officials, Canadian MP Peter Julian (recently tweeted “Boycott all advertisers on Twitter”) and Media Matters for America (a Democratic party-aligned watchdog now locked in a lawsuit with Musk),” Paul Thacker and Matt Taibbi reported last year.
As I reported previously, the only reason the US government passed a TikTok ban was to suppress criticism of Israel.
TikTok over the past year has been aggressively censoring speech critical of Jews and Israel in order to try and stave off a ban.
TikTok last year complied with demands from the Israeli firm CyberWell to censor content exposing the Israeli government’s lies about Hamas committing “mass rape” on October 7th.
Israeli pressure groups, with the full backing of the US government, made it so that exposing debunked lies from documented liars violates TikTok’s terms of service.
This is totally illegal state censorship, blatantly violating the First Amendment, and pro-Israel activists like Erica Mindel are getting paid handsomely to take part.