'Digital Jew-hatred is the kind of antisemitism that affects Jews day-to-day'

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In a one-on-one interview with Maayan Hoffman, Deputy CEO - Strategy & Innovation for the Jerusalem Post,  Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, Founder & Executive Director, CyberWell, explains how CyberWell, the first open live database dedicated to fighting online antisemitic content, tracks online antisemitism. The CyberWell database is driving enforcement and improvement of community standards regarding online antisemitism and is making data transparent for all efforts fighting antisemitism today.

Cohen Montemayor points out that only 20% of antisemitic content reported on social media platforms is ever taken down. “That is like a Jewish user calling 911, and the ambulance shows up only 20% of the time. People are getting exhausted hitting the “Report” button, and you are taking the world’s oldest hatred and putting it on an algorithmically powered machine to spread it to the masses.”

Major social media platforms make up half of the worldwide internet activity, says Cohen Montemayor, and the most popular platforms are TikTok, followed by Instagram and Facebook. She says that CyberWell is the first tech-based tool that consistently applies pressure about antisemitic content, creates transparency about the state of online antisemitism, and breaks down the data into usable data points that can be used by the social media platforms themselves.

Since it debuted in May 2022, CyberWell has onboarded Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok as trusted partners, and she explains that her organization has received a great deal of cooperation from these companies. “There are rules that exist at these platforms, and there are teams dedicated to content moderation. Working with these teams is ultimately what will make us most effective with our data. The way we fight antisemitism online is by democratizing data to everyone.”