By Chris Menahan – Information Liberation
Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, Trump’s Israeli-born Chabadnik nominee for US Anti-Semitism Czar, told Jewish Insider this week that he plans to work with social media platforms on their algorithms to suppress “hatred,” and have them label “misinformation” using so-called “AI.”
Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as U.S. antisemitism special envoy, warned in an interview with Jewish Insider that inaccurate, inflammatory content is being allowed to spread on social media, and pledged to work with social networks to curb the spread of antisemitic falsehoods online.
“The ideal outcome is, I want to continue America’s tradition of free speech and allowing free speech anywhere and everywhere, freedom of expression,” Kaploun said. “But I would like the platforms — because of the advent of AI and those technologies, you have the ability to recognize when something is not factually correct and it should be labeled as such. I think that’s something that we’d like to target.”
“AI” chatbots don’t “know” anything, but thanks for letting us know you don’t either.
Kaploun spoke to JI on Wednesday, with his Senate confirmation vote for the State Department role expected this month before the holiday recess. His comments about working with social media platforms to label misinformation contradict the approach of the Trump administration, which has urged the major platforms not to “censor” information. Earlier this year, after Trump took office, Meta announced the end of its fact-checking program, and YouTube eased many of its content moderation policies.
“There’s many other areas of working with the companies — the algorithms and things that have been now proven, that bots are busy promoting antisemitic rhetoric on the internet, how we get to some of that and preventing some of that. These are very tall tasks. These are not things that occur overnight,” said Kaploun, a Chabad-trained rabbi and businessman from Miami. “But I truly believe there is a true willingness of many people within the administration to tackle these problems and confront them head on, globally.”
That sounds like a global censorship regime to prevent “anti-Semitic rhetoric.”
As an example of the kind of content he would seek to flag as false, Kaploun referred to a July New York Times article about the hunger that many civilians in Gaza were experiencing during Israel’s war against Hamas. The Times published a correction regarding the article several days after it was published, once it was revealed that a child who was featured prominently in the article as an example of malnutrition had preexisting health conditions.
The misrepresentation in the photo could contribute to antisemitism, according to Kaploun, who suggested that the article had been viewed hundreds of times more than the correction.
“I’m not exactly 100% sure of the actual number, but in that realm, a total disbalance and disproportionate view of people saw something that could be creating antisemitic behavior,” said Kaploun. “All those people that saw it have incorrect information.”
The report was not “false,” it lacked context.
The context, that Israel is starving to death and/or denying medical aid to the sickly and infirm, actually makes the story worse.
[Kaploun] declined to say whether he believes social networks should have removed posts that included that article.
“I’m not going to get into the specifics or the semantics of what that’s going to look like. We are going to work collectively and together with these companies and try and come up with productive solutions that will lower the disinformation and lower the hatred,” Kaploun said. “That’s what I’d like to work with these social media platforms to do a better job with, recognizing that and making sure that we can do a better job of getting accurate facts out.”
This is what Kaploun views as “accurate facts”:
JI continues:
Discussing strategy, Kaploun laid out a vision for his tenure as special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, stating that his first priority would be to fight antisemitism with “pro-Semitism” — teaching about Jewish history and culture, and convincing countries and groups that are experiencing antisemitism that Jews are productive members of society and contribute a great deal to the countries in which they live.
“What I mean by pro-Semitism is to explain to countries the benefits of what it is the Jewish nation provides, and our historical perspective of what the Jewish communities have always done for communities, in terms of growth in countries,” said Kaploun. “The countries that have literally attacked the Jews and expelled the Jews don’t always have success, and there’s a reason for that. And when countries are welcoming and when Jews are in countries, usually the benefits far exceed any type of whatever detriments [there] are. There really aren’t detriments.”
Rabbi Kaploun said during his hearing last month that criticism of Israel must abide by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s ever-evolving definition of “anti-Semitism.”
“You have a right to criticize a country, but if you are only going to criticize Israel—and that’s every statement that you’re making—but you’re not going to be consistent across the board, in the IHRA definition it’s very, very clear that you need to condemn everything across the board and not just single out Israel,” Kaploun told Sen. Chris Van Hollen.
Kaploun “initially got connected to Trump through Miriam and Sheldon Adelson,” according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
As a reminder, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said earlier this year that they’re working with the Trump administration to implement the Biden administration and the ADL’s U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.
In related news, Biden’s Anti-Semitism Czar, Deborah Lipstadt, spoke at a Hudson Institute event on Friday titled “Antisemitism as a National Security Threat.”
Around the same time Kaploun was giving this interview to Jewish Insider, World Jewish Congress President Ron Lauder delivered a speech at Capitol Hill calling for massive spending and lawfare to suppress “anti-Semitism.”
“We must spend as much as it takes to turn social media around!” Lauder said.
“We should use every law on the books to hold universities and teachers unions accountable,” he added. “If schools are breaking the law through Title VI, they should be sued!”
On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Florida Rep. Randy Fine also took part in a menorah lighting ceremony with Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Levi Shemtov.
Rabbi Shemtov went viral earlier this year for telling Congress it’s “not enough” to be “not anti-Semitic” — “One must be anti-anti-Semitic.”
He also lobbied Congress to pass the anti-free speech “Antisemitism Awareness Act” (which GOP Rep. Jim Jordan is currently looking to revive).
Sen. Schumer, who championed the “Antisemitism Awareness Act,” started this week by introducing a Senate resolution to condemn Nick Fuentes for his “views,” and Tucker Carlson for “platforming” him on his podcast.
The resolution condemns Fuentes for,
• Having “likened ‘organized Jewry’ to a ‘transnational gang'”
• Using “tropes” like “globalists” that “suggest Jews secretly control media, finance, and government”
• “Claiming that neoconservatism is ‘Jewish in nature'”
• “Denying” that “acts of rape and the killing of babies by Hamas” took place on Oct 7
• “Advancing the dual-loyalty trope by saying that Jewish Americans are loyal first to Israel and that ‘they have this international community across borders, extremely organized, that is putting the interests of themselves before the interests of their home country'”
The resolution is backed by nearly all Senate Democrats, as well as multiple Israel Lobby groups, including the Democratic Majority for Israel, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Jewish Democratic Council of America, Jewish Women International, the Union for Reform Judaism, Hadassah (The Women’s Zionist Organization of America) and the National Council of Jewish Women.
Must be tough being such a powerless minority in our country!