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Facebook hosted terrorist propaganda that celebrated the murder of Jews and praised Islamic State, a leading anti-hate group has alleged.
The posts included celebrations of the Bondi beach massacre that the Community Security Trust says Facebook has been too slow to take down. The posts were still on Facebook on 16 December, two days after the attack, and received shares and likes.
Some accounts are Britain-based and those have been reported to counter-terrorism police in the UK as a matter of urgency.
One post shows video of the aftermath of the Bondi beach attack, which was allegedly carried out by a father and son who were IS supporters, and says: “Allah is the greatest and praise to Allah.” It has clearly been viewed, with more than 100 likes, 27 comments and four shares recorded.
Fifteen people were killed as they celebrated the Jewish festival of Hanukah in Sydney on 14 December. One of the attackers also died.
Another post shows a photo of one of the Bondi beach gunmen and says: “The coming years of art and hell,” and contains praise for an IS leader. This had 12 shares and more than 300 likes.
Facebook said it was in the process of removing some of the posts after being contacted by the Guardian, and said some had already been spotted and removed.
Dave Rich, the director of policy for the CST, which works to keep Jewish people safe from attack, said: “The sheer volume of IS-supporting accounts promoting terrorist content on Facebook is deeply alarming, and the posts celebrating the Bondi terrorist attack are utterly nauseating.
“Yet again, social media companies are incapable of meeting even their most basic of responsibilities and are putting all of us in danger as a result. This simply should not be happening any more. We will be calling on Ofcom to urgently investigate Meta’s failings and to take strong action where possible.”
Ofcom, the media regulator, said: “If a post is reported to a platform now, the platform must decide whether the content is illegal under UK law, and take it down swiftly if it is. Our job is to make sure sites and apps have appropriate measures in place to comply with their duties.”
It said it had received “evidence that suggests terrorist content and illegal hate speech is persisting on some of the largest social media sites”.
A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook, declined to answer a series of questions but said: “The content was removed for violating our policies around dangerous organisations and individuals.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Social media content promoting terrorism or violence against communities is absolutely unacceptable, and will not be tolerated. The law is clear: social media platforms must take action to prevent illegal content on their sites, including terrorist and violent material.”
The focus on pro-IS material on popular social media sites comes amid concern about an increase in terrorist efforts to target Jewish people across the west.
Two men were convicted on 22 December of a plot to get machine guns and shoot Jewish people around the north-west of England. In that plot and the Sydney massacre, both sets of terrorists’ approaches had a degree of sophistication.
Though neither was “directed” by IS, the Sydney attackers visited the Philippines and the north-west England machine-gun plotters had contact with an IS person overseas and were sophisticated enough to try to bypass Jewish community security and infiltrate a Facebook group, giving them details of potential Jewish targets.
Rich said of the English plot: “This is an even more serious plot than the attack on the synagogue in Heaton Park and indicates a much greater level of training and sophistication.”
Vicki Evans, the senior national coordinator for counter-terrorism policing, told the Guardian: “The terrorist threats we face do not stand still and we rarely confine them to history. Instead, they flex in intensity and risk over time – and so does our response.
“Recent attacks in Manchester and Australia are clear reminders of the range of threats we face, and we continue to ask the public to … report any concerns they see in their real-world or online communities.”
