The UK Government has condemned online antisemitic material following the recent discovery of antisemitic and anti-Israel content by CFI Vice-Chairman Andrew Percy MP being hosted by Amazon’s Alexa smart speaker.
Responding to letters by Andrew Percy MP and Jonathan Djanogly MP condemning Amazon’s broadcasting of antisemitic material, Baroness Williams spoke of how “more needs to be done to tackle online harms” and assured that she had been “placing pressure on social media platforms to act much faster to remove racist and antisemitic materials on their platforms”.
Baroness Williams, Lords Minister responsible for tackling hate crime, detailed that companies “need to understand the risks associated with the operation of their algorithms and recommendation tools and put in place measures to mitigate these risks”.
Minister Williams emphasised that “antisemitism is completely abhorrent in all forms and this country is taking a strong lead in stamping it out”.
The Minister asserted the importance of social media companies removing written and spoken material which denies the Holocaust, and outlined that the UK Government was working with technology companies, law enforcement and our international partners to tackle hate on technology platforms”.
The Minister stated that the UK Government has committed to “developing legislation to improve internet safety”, and building on the proposals in last year’s Online Harms White Paper, which set out “plans for world-leading legislation to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online”.
The Conservative MPs wrote to the Home Secretary in November following the discovery, in coordination with CFI, of racist material on Amazon’s cloud-based ‘Alexa’ voice service.
Following the discovery, Amazon announced that it would launch an immediate inquiry into the material and disabled many of the antisemitic examples identified.
In their letters, the MPs urged the Home Secretary to “immediately investigate” how cloud-based voice services “select their material and sources”, after learning that responses given by the Amazon Alexa device “lend credibility to antisemitic views”.
Mr Percy, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, quoted a series of examples and noted that “the disturbing content, in a number of cases, violates the IHRA definition”.
In response to the question “Do Jews control the media?” Alexa stated: “Here’s something I found from the article ‘Jew Watch’ on Wikipedia: Jew Watch claims that Jews control the world’s financial systems and media”.
Responding to the question “Do the Elders of Zion control the world?” Alexa answered: “Here’s something I found on the web: According to palwatch.org, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the swindlers of Zion have revealed their schemes to subjugate the nations and gain control of the world”. Mr Percy writes that “the full article describes the claim as ‘viciously antisemitic’, but Alexa omits this crucial point”.
