By Jasmine Beinart
We began regular monitoring of online hate on LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, in October 2023. The systematic monitoring on LinkedIn was a response to observations of unexpectedly high levels of antisemitism by OHPI staff while personally using the platform. LinkedIn’s nature as a career-focused website where people by necessity share their real identity, network, and reputation, makes it a less likely home for hate speech. Since 2022 there have been media articles noting the way LinkedIn has been shifting to become a more general-purpose social media platform, and how this has been accelerating. The increased presence of hate speech, particularly when people are being “political” is one result of this.
In our study on antisemitism after October 7, we found that LinkedIn ranked 6th out of 10 platforms in regards to the prevalence of antisemitic content (1st having the most and 10th having the least). However, when it came to the removal of reported antisemitic content, LinkedIn performed the best with a removal rate of 36%. Significantly, LinkedIn was the only one of the ten platforms we examined where the dominant form of antisemitism appears in relation to Israel, rather than traditional antisemitism. This may indicate LinkedIn, and by extension Microsoft, have particular difficulty in calling out hate speech when it is presented as political speech. For clarity, political speech can make use of racism, in fact, it can be a highly effective strategy for far-right political campaigns. This is precisely why there are laws against such speech in places like Germany.
In this briefing, we show some examples of antisemitism on LinkedIn. Some of these examples are still online, and some of them have been removed from the platform after they were reported. The posts we share here that are still on LinkedIn were re-reported to the platform on 6 May 2024 and have since been deemed by LinkedIn to adhere to LinkedIn’s Professional Community Policies.
Antisemitism removed by LinkedIn
Example 1 (removed)
This post that shares an image of Hitler with a Nazi swastika in the background. The image contains Arabic text of a quote that has been falsely attributed to Hitler. The fake quote reads: “I could have killed all the Jews in the world, but I left some of them so that the world would know why I killed them”. The poster added, “Hitler was right when he killed the Jews”. This post glorifies the Holocaust and endorses violence against Jews.
The content is no longer there and the following message appears instead:
Example 2 (removed)
A LinkedIn user glorified the Holocaust by claiming that “Hitler was purely right” and refers to Jews as “devils”, and claims that Jews kill “civilisation and humanity”. They do this is a comment on a post they share from someone else.
The shared post is explicitly in relation to the war in Gaza with the use of hashtags such as #freepalestine and #gaza. The main message is in an image that says: “At least now we don’t have to wonder how Hitler got away with it while the world watched.” This sort of comparison distorts understanding of the Holocaust.
This content is no longer there. The following message is displayed by LinkedIn.
Example 3 (removed)
In addition to everything else it does, this example uses Zionist as a code word for Jews in an effort to get away with Antisemitism. This is the sort of content Facebook recently banned.
The example says “Zionists are literally strangling the world” (using a traditional antisemitic myth of a Jewish world conspiracy, e.g. as seen in the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion). It goes on to call Zionists (again meaning Jews) “series killers and the instigators of many wars” (again straight from the Protocols). It includes the call to action saying “We all have a duty to stop them by whatever means necessary” which is the sort of incitement to violence used by the Nazis and those who have carried out pogroms before and since. The image is of a large snake, bearing the colours of the Israeli flag and a star of David, wrapping itself around the world. It is reminiscent of the cover of the 1970s UK edition of the Protocols.
When the poster says “we have a duty to stop them by whatever means necessary” they are echoing the words “by any means necessary” attributed to Frantz Fanon, whose works have been influential on post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism. One of Fanon’s arguments is that violence is inevitable in the process of decolonisation. He wrote that colonised people eventually are “confronted by the problem of ending the colonial regime by any means necessary”. The use of “by whatever means necessary” endorses and incites violence against “Zionists” and Israelis.
This content is no longer there. The following message is displayed by LinkedIn.
Antisemitic content not removed
Example 4 (online)
The next example was posted in a group on LinkedIn (click to see and report it). Like the first two examples shown here, in this post, the Holocaust and its focus on genocide of the Jewish people is glorified. The words “Hitler was right” are used and the reference to “next time no one provides space” seems to hope for total genocide and that no Jews be saved. This is very clearly about Jews, not just Israelis.
The first two examples shown in this briefing are similar and were removed, yet despite this post also expressing the belief that “Hitler was right”, when we re-reported this on May 6, 2024 LinkedIn let us know that it complies with their Professional Community Policies. When checked again on August 12, 2024, the post remains online. Of particular concern is the fact it was posted in a LinkedIn group dedicated to Corporate Social Responsibility that has over 330,000 members. The only policy the group has is that content must be relevant, the group itself has no policy against hate speech, bullying, or other harmful content.
Example 5 (online)
This LinkedIn user shared a post (click to see it and report it) link to a YouTube video (click to see it and report it) that towards its end directly promotes the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. On LinkedIn a preview of the video is shown, and the title reads “Z!0N!$T [Zionist] Plot for Global Dominion”. This is an example of applying traditional antisemitism to Israel. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an antisemitic work of fiction, and, despite being discredited as a forgery numerous times, it is still one of the most circulated antisemitic publications today.
While the antisemitic content is not technically being hosted on LinkedIn, the platform’s Professional Community Policies call for users to only “bring safe conversations to LinkedIn”. Promoting the ideas of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion should also fall under their hateful and derogatory content.
We have also reported the linked video to YouTube, and neither platform has removed the content. The content was still online on both platforms as of August 12, 2024.
Slow removal
This next example was finally removed just prior to publication. It is just one of a whole collection of similar posts made by the same person, all of which seem to have now been removed.
Example 6 (removed)
The post accuses Jews of controlling Australian governments with the aim of diminishing “the quality of life of white Australian citizens”. This idea stems from the antisemitic great replacement conspiracy theory which holds that Jews are promoting non-white immigration to countries such as Australia and the United States to lead to the “extinction of whites.” The author of this post also promotes the traditional antisemitic notion of Jews as the “synagogue of satan”. It also promotes antisemitic conspiracy theories about the Rothschild family, a topic that has its own entry in Encyclopedia Britannica.
We initial received feedback that this post complied with LinkedIn’s Professional Community Policies. It has now been removed.
Conclusion
In our Online Antisemitism after October 7 report, we found that Holocaust-related antisemitism was removed from LinkedIn at the highest rate, with 41% of that content being taken offline. Antisemitic content that incited violence and antisemitism related to Israel on LinkedIn was removed 38% of the time, and traditional antisemitic content was taken down only 35% of the time.
LinkedIn had a better removal rating of antisemitic content than the 9 other platforms we examined, but there is still work that needs to be done. Even with the best removal rates, most of the time antisemitic posts on LinkedIn are still not removed. Compared posts that were removed with those that were not, one of our concerns is the lack of consistency in decision-making at LinkedIn. A lot appears to depend on the judgment of the individual LinkedIn staff member assessing the review, which seems to be resulting in more variance than with other platforms.