internet – Jewish Independent

Constructing age-tech maps

Keren Etkin (photo by Pazit Oz)

Keren Etkin, a 32-year-old Israeli master’s student, has been working on what she calls the Age Tech Market Map. This small but full link library is a place for older adults to find the latest news about technology.

“I am a gerontologist by training and tech enthusiast by nature,” said Etkin, who was born and raised in Israel and currently lives in Tel Aviv. “Gerontology is the study of various aspects of aging and gerontologists are either scientists researching the various aspects of aging or professionals working in the aging business.”

While working on her undergraduate degree in the sciences, Etkin began volunteering with Holocaust survivors, which she found a stark contrast to working in the lab. After graduating, she continued further along this path, finding work in the nonprofit sector. But she soon realized that, without a relevant degree, it would be challenging for her to advance her career, which is why she is currently studying for a master’s in gerontology.

“I work at the intersection of tech and aging, which is a very interesting place to be right now, professionally,” said Etkin. “I also run The Gerontechnologist [thegerontechnologist.com], which allows me to explore different aspects of the age-tech ecosystem and talk to many interesting people who do interesting and impactful work.”

Etkin’s first job in the industry was with Intuition Robotics, where she helped develop and build ElliQ, a friendly sidekick for older adults.

“ElliQ was the first big project I was involved with,” said Etkin. “I was recruited to Intuition Robotics in 2016 as the company’s first employee and only gerontologist. That was a very hands-on project that I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to work on for several years.

“I know there are other gerontologists out there working in or with start-ups or investing in start-ups, and I think that’s a good thing – to have professionals from the aging industry come work inside the tech industry and help build tech solutions for the aging population.”

ElliQ makes it easier to connect to family, friends and the digital world, and helps users stay active and engaged. With it, people can read and respond to messages, share pictures, get reminders about medications, respond to questions and even receive surprise suggestions throughout the day.

“I think incorporating technology into any field of work is beneficial, specifically when it comes to the aging industry,” said Etkin. “There’s a lot to gain, since it’s very labour intensive. Some of the work currently being done by humans could be done by machines – like paperwork and some physical tasks – hence, freeing up humans to perform tasks that require uniquely human skills, such as empathy, critical thinking and creative problem-solving.”

The biggest hurdle Etkin sees in the industry is that most tech companies do not view older adults as potential users. In her opinion, they are missing out on a huge sector.

“Studies show that older adults are adopting technology more and more,” she said. “Internet use is rising steadily and many older adults own smartphones. From my experience, older adults are willing to use technology as long as they find that it’s useful and brings value to their lives.”

According to Etkin’s website, “The global spending power of people 60+ years old is expected to reach $20 trillion by 2020. Americans over 50 are expected to spend $84 billion annually on tech products by 2030.

“Contrary to common belief, most older adults hold a positive perception of technology. Many are eager to learn new tech skills as long as they find them useful. However, most of them admit they require some assistance in setting up and learning to use new devices.

“A report by the Pew Research Center found that 42% of older adults in the U.S. own smartphones and that 67% use the internet. Baby boomers spend an average of 27 hours a week online.”

Etkin began working on The Gerontechnologist in 2017. At the time, she was just looking for was a snapshot of the ecosystem and she was curious to learn what other people in the field were working on.

“After spending many, many hours doing online research, I came to the conclusion that there was no age-tech market map out there and so I decided to create it myself,” said Etkin. “After publishing it online, I got a lot of feedback and realized that other people were also interested in this. I also realized that I enjoyed creating content about age tech, and it sort of took off from there. The blog today serves anyone who’s interested in tech for older adults.”

This past summer, Etkin started posting podcasts and video series on thegerontechnologist.com, and she plans to keep working on projects that she is passionate about and that she thinks bring value to the world.

Etkin is working on the 2020 Age Tech Market Map. In the process, she will evaluate more than 2,000 service providers and choose the top 200 for the map.

“I would love to hear about Canadian start-ups developing tech for older adults,” said Etkin. “You can reach me through the contact page on my website or message me on LinkedIn and Twitter.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Time to face ourselves

Actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen delivered the keynote address last month at an Anti-Defamation League conference. His words quickly went viral because he pinpointed fears and challenges shared by millions about the power of social media. He hit many nails on the head.

“Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march,” he said. “Hate crimes are surging, as are murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities. All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.”

He was referring to social media like Facebook and Twitter and platforms like YouTube and Google, whose algorithms, he said, “deliberately amplify the type of content that keeps users engaged – stories that appeal to our baser instincts and that trigger outrage and fear.”

Had Facebook existed in the 1930s, he went on, it would have run 30-second ads for Hitler’s “solution” to the “Jewish problem.”

Baron Cohen acknowledged that social media companies have taken some steps to reduce hate and conspiracies on their platforms, “but these steps have been mostly superficial.”

“These are the richest companies in the world, and they have the best engineers in the world,” he said. “They could fix these problems if they wanted to.” The companies could do more to police the messages being circulated on their sites, he suggested.

He’s correct about the problems. But the first problem with his solution is that he is asking a couple of corporations to judge billions of interactions, making them not only powerful media conglomerates, which they already are, but also the world’s most prolific censors and arbiters of expression. Of course, by abdication, they are already erring on the side of hate speech, but is the alternative preferable? If we think Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has too much power now, do we really want to make him the planet’s censor-in-chief?

Yes, the platforms benefit from and, therefore, promote, the most extreme viewpoints. But, even if we could, would forcing those voices off the platforms make the world a safer place? There are already countless alternative spaces for people whose extremism has been pushed off the mainstream sites. Just because we can’t hear them doesn’t mean they’ve gone away.

Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian philosopher who declared “the medium is the message” died four years before Zuckerberg was born. He could have predicted that social media would change the way we interact and communicate. But has it fundamentally changed who we are? Or has it merely allowed our true selves fuller voice? Perhaps a little of both. Facebook, Twitter and the others are not agnostic forces; they influence us as we engage with them. But, in the end, they are mere computer platforms, human-created applications that have taken on outsized force in our lives. And all the input is human-created. Since the dawn of the industrial age, we have imagined our own inventions taking over and controling us, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Hal to Zuckerberg’s Facebook.

In all these cases, fictional or not, the truth is that the power remains in human hands. This is no less true today. We could, if the political will existed, shut down these platforms or apply restraints along the lines Baron Cohen suggests. But this would be to miss the larger point.

We live in a world filled with too much bigotry, chauvinism, hatred and violence. This is the problem. Dr. Martin Luther King said: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” And there are plenty of sites on social media that advance mutual understanding and love over hate. Are their messages as likely to go viral? Probably not. But that, ultimately, is determined by billions of individual human choices. A small but illuminating counterrevolution seems to be happening right now with a renaissance of the ideas of Mister (Fred) Rogers and his message of simple kindness. While much of the world seems alight in hatred and intolerance, a countermovement has always existed to advance love and inclusiveness. This needs to be nurtured in any and every way possible.

If Facebook were a country, its “population” would be larger than China’s. Bad example when we are discussing issues of free speech and the accountability of the powerful, perhaps, but illuminating – because an entity of that size and impact should be accountable. As a corporate body, it has few fetters other than governmental controls, which are problematic themselves. Concerned citizens (and platform users) should demand of these companies the safeguards we expect. We are the consumers, after all, and we should not ignore that power.

But neither should we abstain from taking responsibility ourselves. Social media influences us, yes. But, to an exponentially greater degree, it is merely a reflection of who we are. It is less distorted than the funhouse mirror we like to imagine it being. If what we see when we look at social media is a depiction of the world we find repugnant, it is not so much social media that needs to change, it is us.

Scammer awareness

On Nov. 3, the Jewish Seniors Alliance, with COSCO Health and Wellness Institute, presents Privacy and Security in the Internet Age. The JSA annual fall symposium has a different topic of particular relevance to seniors every year and this year’s topic aims to educate seniors on using the internet safely and securely.

There are numerous phone and internet scams that target seniors and separate them from their hard-earned dollars. The scammers often impersonate long-lost relatives or offer excellent returns on investment. One must also be wary of viruses and people trying to overtake emails.

COSCO provides workshops led by trained facilitators to seniors groups throughout British Columbia. In the case of the symposium, the presenter will be Floyd Smith. He will focus on personal privacy and the benefits and risks of technology. He will also explore mobile technology versus a desktop environment and provide an overview of home device systems.

The JSA motto is “Seniors Stronger Together,” while that of COSCO is “Seniors Helping Seniors.” Combining forces, it is hoped that the two organizations can both help and give strength to seniors in the Jewish community.

The symposium workshop takes place Nov. 3 at the Peretz Centre, with registration at 1:30 p.m. and the event beginning 2 p.m,; the cost to attend is $5. Refreshments will be served. Because of construction in the area, access to the Peretz’s underground parking is through the lane from 49th Avenue, the first alley west of Cambie Street. A parking attendant will be at the entrance of the lane at 49th Avenue to direct traffic to the lot, to which there is no access from 45th Avenue.

For more information or to register, contact the JSA office at 604-732-1555 or [email protected].

Focus on online hate

Kasari Govender, British Columbia’s human rights commissioner. (photo from Wosk Centre)

Hate in British Columbia, in Canada and globally is on the rise. In 2017, there were 255 police-reported hate crimes in British Columbia, an increase of 55% from just two years earlier. In 2018, Metro Vancouver had the highest rate of hate crimes reported to police in any of Canada’s three largest metropolitan areas, most based on the victim’s ethnicity or religion, with a smaller but significant number based on sexual orientation.

These alarming statistics, and others, provided a framework and urgency for an event Sept. 12 at Simon Fraser University’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue in downtown Vancouver. The event, titled From Hate to Hope in a Digital Age, is envisioned as the inaugural annual Simces and Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights.

Contextualizing the discussion, Shauna Sylvester, executive director of the Wosk Centre for Dialogue, cited the results of a report undertaken by her organization. These indicate that one in three Canadians believes Canadian-born citizens should have greater say in government than those born outside the country. One-quarter of Canadians say we have too many protections for minorities and one in four also believes we have too many protections for religious freedom.

Keynote speaker at the forum was Kasari Govender, in just her second week on the job as British Columbia’s human rights commissioner. She is the first to hold this role in the province since that office was closed in 2002.

“In my view, there is a strong connection between hateful speech and hateful violence, both on an individual and a systemic level,” she said, citing racist manifestoes sometimes posted online by perpetrators in advance of a mass killing. She said it is necessary to trace the path from speech to violence.

A common theme of recent mass murderers is anti-immigration sentiment, sometimes emphasizing the “purity of the nation, whether that nation is Canada, New Zealand, the U.S. or another,” she said, adding that many of the attacks around the world that have been linked to white nationalism correspond to discourse in mainstream political debates over immigration and public policy.

The worst antisemitic mass murder in United States history, the attack on Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, happened while U.S. President Donald Trump and others were promoting fears of the so-called “migrant caravan” coming from Central America. Part of that conversation, Govender said, “was somehow blaming the Jews for this migrant caravan, drawing a connection in the public discourse, and then there was the shooting.”

Boris Johnson, now prime minister of the United Kingdom, compared women who wear burqas to bank robbers, which led, Govender said, to an increase in acts of hate against Muslim women in the United Kingdom.

Online hate is a particular product of technologies that have emerged in recent decades, she said. “The anonymity, reach and immediacy afforded by the internet escalates the problem beyond what we’ve seen before,” she said. “The internet is a very effective tool for fomenting hate from belief to action, from hateful words to violent actions.”

While forcing social media platforms to police hate speech might be criticized as an infringement of free expression, she said, the opposite is true. Regulating platforms to shut down violent rhetoric actually improves access to freedom of expression for many, as people of colour, women and others are being silenced online by racism and misogyny, she said.

Participants at the Wosk Centre offered a wide range of perspectives.

Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, outlined the approach his agency takes in confronting online hatred.

“Legal [action] would be our last recourse against a hate group or a hate propagandist,” he noted, saying that their first response is to “try to hold somebody socially accountable.” That means, if the person is anonymous, exposing them. If the person is not anonymous, this might mean bringing their posts to the attention of their employers, family and friends.

“Those might provide checks on their behaviour,” he said, adding, “We’re not really trying to reform people here, we’re just trying to stop the spread of hate propaganda.”

For those who do not respond to social accountability, Balgord said, Canada’s laws are insufficient. Application of the Criminal Code’s section that deals with the wilful promotion of hate and distribution of hate propaganda is unwieldy.

“We did use to have a better recourse,” he said. “It was Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. It would allow a private individual to essentially file a complaint, which would be vetted by the Canadian Human Rights Commission and, if found credible, would go to the tribunal. They could order a cease-and-desist order against that individual and up to a $5,000 fine.” If, at that point, the individual failed to comply, they would be in contravention of a court order and could face jail.

“We really want to see something like Section 13 come back,” he said.

Several speakers agreed that social media platforms need to do more policing of hate speech. Some countries have laws that force social media companies to address hate material on their platforms within certain timeframes or face serious fines.

Social media platforms, Balgord said, may already be in contravention of Canada’s existing laws against discrimination in the provision of a commercial service, because women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ people and other members of targeted groups are exposed to abuse, harassment and death threats that could drive them off the platform.

Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan-Kaplan, director of inter-religious studies at the Vancouver School of Theology, noted that government budgets are limited but that education can take place everywhere – and that everyone is an educator. Early childhood is crucial, she said.

“What children do together, the songs they sing, the books they read, all of that becomes the building blocks of the way they think,” she said. “All of us who interact with children have an opportunity to begin to teach values of respecting difference, helping others, nonviolence.… One week of summer camp with friends on a theme of diversity, peace, public service – these are experiences that stay with teens and we really, really bring them into young adulthood in a different way.”

A speaker from the audience, a counselor and educator, noted that inequality, including economic inequality and poverty, makes people susceptible to fear and that can become a foundation for hate.

Another speaker contended that there is, in effect, no such thing as race.

“I think it’s very problematic to use the term race as if it’s a reality,” he said. “There is such a thing as racism but not really race. If you look at the majority of anthropologists, geneticists and so on, they say that we have much, much more in common with each other [than differences].… Even using terms like black and white to refer to people reinforces racism. We never call people yellow anymore, because that’s racist. We need to come up with a new language that doesn’t emphasize unreal differences and that are respectful to everybody.”

Lorene Oikawa, president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians, contended that sharing one another’s stories is an effective means to education.

“People really don’t know the stories,” she said. “For sure, there are some people who do, but they don’t know the [extent of the] harm that was done and the intergenerational trauma.”

She applied lessons of the past to current events. “In 2019, Japanese-Americans, Japanese-Canadians are horrified by some of the hateful rhetoric we’re hearing [that] could be lifted from 1942,” she said. “If people knew their history, more people would be going, ‘Wait a minute. What we did back in 1942 was wrong. Why are we saying the same things about people from [other] countries, putting people in camps, separating families, separating children from their families?’ All that stuff happened to Japanese-Americans, Japanese-Canadians and it’s being repeated today.”

She added: “We feel it’s our duty that what happened to our community must never happen to another community again.”

Clint Curle, senior advisor to the president of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, agreed that education is pivotal.

“Is there a lesson, an experience, we can give children especially that will make them resistant to hate speech and resistant to hateful violence?” asked Curle. He compared hatred to a communicable disease.

“If this was polio, what would we do? If this was polio, we would do what we did, which is vaccinate. The way vaccinations work is you get children and you give them just enough of something close to the disease [so] that they develop an internal resistance to it, so, when they encounter the disease, there is something within them that says, no. So, when they encounter hate, they’ll know.”

With more than 1.5 million visitors to the museum since it opened five years ago, Curle said what resonates, especially with young people, is exactly what Oikawa suggested.

“The thing that seems to work best is storytelling across social boundaries,” he said.

Zena Simces, a health and social service policy consultant and a former Pacific region chair of the now-defunct Canadian Jewish Congress, conceived of the annual event with her husband, Dr. Simon Rabkin.

“We felt that we wanted to enhance an understanding of human rights in our community and to create an opportunity for dialogue on human rights issues,” Simces said. “Our aim is to select current and relevant themes each year and to invite experts and community leaders and community members to advance and generate positive action.”

Rabkin, a cardiologist, professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia and president of the medical staff at Vancouver General Hospital, added: “The dialogue this evening … is seeking to enhance our understanding and knowledge of how this increase in hate and its consequences can be addressed from legal, social media and community perspectives.”

A dialogue on human rights

Zena Simces and Simon Rabkin (photos from organizers)

A first-annual event next month aims to mobilize individuals and groups to tackle issues of human rights in a comprehensive way.

The Simces and Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights, on Sept. 12, will feature Kasari Govender, British Columbia’s incoming human rights commissioner. A number of invited guests will offer comments from the audience and a reception will follow for less formal interactions. The free event has already reached full capacity.

Govender is the province’s first human rights commissioner since 2002, when the government, under the B.C. Liberals, abolished the position, making this the only province in the country without a human rights commission. Currently, Govender is the executive director of West Coast LEAF (Legal Education and Action Fund), which advances gender equality through involvement in equality rights cases at all levels of court. Govender assumes her new position in September.

The dialogue event, intended to be replicated each year, is the brainchild of Vancouver couple Zena Simces and Simon Rabkin. The series is presented in partnership with Simon Fraser University’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, where the event is to take place, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. The topic of this year’s forum is From Hate to Hope in a Digital Age.

“Human Rights has been an interest of mine for many years,” said Simces, a health and social service policy consultant who has worked with minority communities. She is also a former Pacific region chair of the now-defunct Canadian Jewish Congress. “Simon and I felt that there was not one overall organization in Vancouver that was devoted to human rights issues.”

When Simces lived in Fredericton, N.B., she set up a lecture series in conjunction with the Atlantic Centre for Human Rights. It has continued for 30 years and Simces travels there annually for the event.

“In the last year or so, there’s just been so much going on about hate and abuse of human rights, violence, far-right groups and antisemitism, so we both felt there was a void in Vancouver with respect to a dedicated program on human rights,” she said. “There are a lot of different interest groups – women’s groups, specific minority groups – that have different programs, but there isn’t one group really now in Vancouver that is looking at the whole area of human rights broadly for the whole community. When we approached Simon Fraser’s Wosk Centre for Dialogue, they felt the same and thought it was a great idea.”

Rabkin is a cardiologist, a professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia and president of the medical staff at Vancouver Hospital. He also does investigative research in cardiology and has led numerous organizations.

“I’ve been involved for years with looking after individuals in either under-serviced areas in Canada or in Africa and have looked after disadvantaged peoples as patients and have seen the impact of problems of human rights affecting individuals’ lives, and so I wanted to see about doing something that might alter the attitudes towards minimizing or denigrating human rights, which have affected people that I’ve been involved with,” he said.

With SFU, the pair set up an advisory group that includes thought leaders in the field, including a legal expert in international human rights; a former ambassador who has dealt with peace, security and human rights issues; a representative from the Canadian Museum for Human Rights; and representatives from the Wosk Centre.

“We also brought together a multicultural group of young leaders for a one-time focus group,” Simces said. It was out of this group that the idea arose to prioritize the issue of human rights in the digital age.

In addition to opening the event up to the public, specific invitations were made to multicultural organizations, indigenous groups, police, members of the legal community, health workers, educators and representatives of different religious communities, including Rabbi Laura Duhan-Kaplan, director of inter-religious studies at the Vancouver School of Theology, among others.

“What we wanted to do is to create a venue and an opportunity for people to start talking together … not just to complain about problems, but also to be able to start formulating approaches to solve problems and address them and solve them,” said Rabkin. “We don’t have a political mandate to change things. But we believe that by dialoguing and by having the community speak to and hear from the newly appointed commissioner and to have people such as the Canadian Museum for Human Rights involved and other groups involved … then there will be a lot of important ideas created and a lot of opportunities for exchange of information and thoughts and we believe that this will be a catalyst moving forward.”

Simces added that she expects antisemitism to come up in the discussions, as statistics indicate that the Jewish community is one of the most targeted groups for hate crimes. However, she added: “We wanted this to be broader than just the Jewish community. I think it’s educating the broader community on antisemitism and other issues, so we wanted to make sure that this was a dialogue within the broader community.”

“If we can reduce hate generally, then that impacts a reduction in antisemitism,” said Rabkin. “That’s the objective.”

“We hope people will come and participate in the dialogue and really think about how to follow-up in terms of addressing the issue of hate from a legal, social media, education and community perspective,” Simces said.

Monitoring online hate

On Monday, Facebook eliminated many extremist pages from its platform, including several Canadian pages, such as those of extremist groups Soldiers of Odin, the Canadian Nationalist Front and Aryan Strikeforce, as well as individuals like white supremacists Faith Goldy and Kevin Goudreau.

Some anti-racist activists say it’s a good start, but only the tip of the iceberg. They also assert that occasional purges of hate content will not address the larger issue in the absence of clear, enforceable standards by social media giants like Twitter and Facebook, which also owns Instagram.

Relatedly, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has launched a campaign, #notonmyfeed, which is intended, according to the accompanying website, “to stop online hate from becoming real-world violence.” (See jewishindependent.ca/cija-fights-online-hate.) CIJA cited social media posts by the murderers in the Pittsburgh synagogue and the Christchurch mosque killings as cause for governments to move on the issue.

“In both cases, the perpetrator used social media to spread their heinous, hateful agenda,” according to the website notonmyfeed.ca. “From white supremacists to ISIS, it is increasingly clear that online hate and radicalization can fuel and foreshadow offline violence.”

The House of Commons justice committee – as if they are not busy enough with the SNC-Lavalin affair – is launching a study on the issue. The intent, according to CIJA, is to develop a national strategy around online hate.

A national strategy confronting hatred, whether online or offline, seems like a positive development if it helps track problematic people and ideas in order to prevent future violence.

The benefits of a crackdown on online hatred are obvious: by making it more difficult for hateful ideas to reach large, mainstream audiences, moves like those by Facebook are a positive step. Groups that use social media to recruit individuals into hate movements may be hobbled by such policies. Although there are plenty of forums online where they can continue their efforts, hate groups may not have as easy and accessible a reach if policies are put in place to monitor and censor such groups and their messages.

Of course, some of the extremists are crowing about being banned.

“Our enemies are weak and terrified,” Goldy tweeted (because she is not banned from that platform). “They forget most revolutions were waged before social media!”

True enough. But if we make Goldy’s job harder, it’s a good thing.

However, while there are potential positive outcomes, we should not be blind to the potential unintended consequences of such a move.

If the murderers of Pittsburgh and Christchurch had given hints on social media of their intent, isn’t the larger issue here that those threats went unchecked and, therefore, the perpetrators were allowed to complete their mission of mass murder without intervention? Do we really want to eliminate forums in which we can track and identify potential terrorists? If we ban them from these platforms, are we forcing them underground into places where we cannot police them?

Presumably, police and intelligence agencies know where to find the online warrens of hatemongers and can monitor those venues almost as easily as they could Facebook or Twitter, while ensuring that members of the public who are innocently surfing the web do not stumble upon violent hate messaging in seemingly innocuous places. Even so, given that, as CIJA points out, the Pittsburgh and Christchurch killers left a trail on social media and still managed to execute their terrible plans, it suggests we’re not doing a stellar job on this front even when the warning signs are on the world’s largest sharing platforms. So, how much better are we to expect things to be when we force them into the darker crevasses of the online world?

This issue is confounding in part because the internet is, by definition, anarchic and largely beyond the control of all but the most authoritarian governments. As a result, governments and even social media behemoths like Facebook can do only so much to control what is shared through the web writ large.

Leaving aside issues of free expression (which differ across jurisdictions in ways that social media do not), there are practical considerations that we hope elected officials, law enforcement and social media corporations themselves consider when addressing online hate.

As governments do begin to take the issue seriously and consider interventions in the interest of public safety (including, especially, the safety of the most commonly targeted identifiable groups), we trust that a balance will be struck between eradicating violently hateful messaging, on the one hand, and, on the other, not harming law enforcement’s ability to do their job by pushing these ideas into clandestine sectors where they can neither be monitored nor challenged. Finding that balance should be the key to formulating public policy on this urgent issue.

CIJA fights online hate

“We were saddened, horrified and deeply angered by the murderous terrorist attack in Christchurch, which was clearly motivated by hatred of Muslims that was at least in part fomented online,” Martin Sampson of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) told the Independent. “This is another disturbing example of how terrorists and mass murderers make use of social media – both before and after attacks – to spread their heinous message.”

On Friday, March 15, 50 Muslims were murdered by a white nationalist terrorist at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. On Oct. 27, 2018, 11 Jews were murdered at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Penn. Both perpetrators had been active in spreading hatred online. In the case of Tree of Life Synagogue, the shooter had written a post announcing his intentions hours before the attack.

“This issue has been of interest to us for some time,” said Sampson. “We included it as a core federal priority in our Federal Issues Guide, which was released in September of 2018. The horrific shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in late October, and the fact that the assailant had been highly active in promoting antisemitism on social media – it is reported that he posted more than 700 antisemitic messages online in the nine months or so prior to the attack – underscored the urgency of the issue and the need to increase awareness about the connection between online hate and offline violence. This is why we launched notonmyfeed.ca.”

The goal of CIJA’s #notonmyfeed campaign is to reduce the spread of online hate speech. “In any democratic society that values freedom and individual rights, no right is absolute,” said Sampson. “Striking a reasonable balance between preserving free speech and protecting Canadians from those who systematically demonize and slander entire communities is a challenging, complex task, but not an impossible one.”

CIJA is calling for a comprehensive response that addresses hate in a variety of forms, not just antisemitism, he said. “We can preserve free speech while protecting Canadians from those who deliberately promote hostility – and even glorify violence – against entire communities.”

Sampson said there is a direct link between online hate speech and violence. “In countless cases – such as in the case of individuals who have been radicalized to participate in terrorism or hate crimes – online propaganda has been a significant factor,” he said. “This is a complex issue. Understanding it and developing tools to counter it is why we are calling on the government of Canada to take the lead by launching a national strategy to tackle online hate, working in partnership with social media platforms and internet service providers.”

Some people contend that, if online hate speech foreshadows offline violence, there may be some value in monitoring it, rather than forcing it underground. As well, if kicked off one social platform, those inciting hatred can just move to another one.

“In cases of ignorance, inappropriate statements or offhand comments that are bigoted, counter-speech is clearly the best response, and these types of online behaviours are not the focus of our calls for a national strategy to tackle online hate. In cases of propaganda being systematically produced by extremists – particularly when it includes the glorification of violence – allowing it to continue can in some cases pose significant risks to public safety,” said Sampson about these concerns. “Moreover, allowing such behaviour to take place on social media platforms often violates the basic terms and conditions of those sites. Social media platforms should enforce their own existing policies.”

The movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel over its treatment of Palestinians is controversial, with some seeing it as a legitimate tactic opposing human rights abuses and others seeing it as a form of discrimination rooted in antisemitism. “It is neither the focus of our policy position on online hate, nor can I perceive any scenario in which BDS would be implicated or affected by a national strategy to tackle online hate,” said Sampson, when asked whether BDS was one of the intended targets of CIJA’s campaign. “To be clear – we strongly oppose BDS and work to expose and counter the real agenda of the BDS movement, but that is a very separate challenge and completely distinct from our call for a national strategy to combat online hate.”

Asked if CIJA has any plans for addressing hate speech in the Jewish community itself, Sampson said, “Our position on online hate is that a national strategy should address hate in a variety of forms, not just antisemitism. This is why we have mobilized a coalition of communities, including the Muslim community, to join us in this effort. We believe every online account should be held to the same standard, regardless of the identity of the person who runs the account. When it comes to the Jewish community, we strive to set an example in how we manage our social media accounts, allowing debate and diverse opinions in the comments section of our posts, while having a zero tolerance policy toward bigotry and hateful comments.”

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He is Pacific correspondent for the CJN, writes regularly for the Forward, Tricycle and the Wisdom Daily, and has been published in Sojourners, Religion Dispatches and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.

How to cope with technology

Entrepreneur, venture capitalist, author and media visionary Leonard Brody is the keynote speaker at this year’s JFS Innovators Lunch April 24. (photo from JFS Vancouver

On Tuesday, April 24, Jewish Family Services (JFS) will be hosting its annual Innovators Lunch. The event, which encourages people to think as innovators and uplift lives to bring about meaningful and lasting social change, raises essential funds that go directly to serve JFS clients, programs and services. It has attracted more than 600 people in each of its 14 years.

This year, the keynote speaker is Leonard Brody, chair of Creative Labs, a joint-venture with Creative Artists Agency, the largest sport and entertainment agency in the world. He and his team are building new ventures and companies for some of the biggest celebrities and sports personalities in the world. He acts as principal in several venture capital funds throughout the world, and is behind the financing and creation of dozens of start-up companies every year. He is also one of the owners of Coventry City Football Club in England.

The award-winning entrepreneur, venture capitalist, bestselling author and two-time Emmy nominated media visionary has been called “a controversial leader of the new world order.” His upcoming book, in partnership with Forbes Magazine, is The Great Rewrite. In it, he addresses the rapid pace of change, innovation and disruption brought about by the internet and how to respond to its profound changes on our social and economic ways of life.

“Everything we do, from how we speak, how we buy, how we employ people, is being rewritten,” he told JFS. “The internet is the first time in our history where millions of people can speak directly to millions of other people at little cost, no regulation; the first time in our species that we have owned our communication at mass scale on a global level. The tools for innovation are nothing, the playing field is now level.”

Wherein lies the controversy? Brody argues that the resulting change in communication is “a massive disconnect between the institutions we’ve created and the people we’ve become.” He contends that it is the largest level of institutional shift in human history.

“Our world is inverted,” he explained. “We are fundamentally different than the people we were 100 years ago.” The institutions that run society are traditionally top down, he said. Take, for example, politics, with a prime minister at the top and the people at the bottom. Once the internet became ubiquitous, the power pyramids started to flip, or invert.

The pace can be disorienting, and Brody seeks to raise the level of our dialogue and provide a useful framework for action that people can look to and use. Through concrete stories, he provides many answers, ultimately offering a playbook on how we can engage in the world that’s being rewritten around us.

For tickets to JFS’s Innovators Lunch on April 24 at the Hyatt Regency Vancouver, visit jfsvancouver.ca/innovators. There is a limited number available, so book your space early.

Tracking down haters

Israel’s Ministry of the Diaspora recently announced what it calls the most advanced system of its kind in the world to track antisemitic content on social media.

The Anti-Semitism Cyber Monitoring System, or ACMS, can find relevant posts that are antisemitic (using the definition devised by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) on Facebook and Twitter in English, French, German, Arabic. It can see who posted and shared the comments. Other languages and social media platforms are expected to be added to the system as it progresses.

In a month-long trial run, the system identified 409,000 antisemitic posts by 30,000 individuals. Whether the system can or cannot catch every instance of antisemitism online is less significant than the fact that it is a tool to identify trends. In the trial, the system identified the world’s “most antisemitic cities” as Santiago, Chile; Dnipro, Ukraine; and Bucharest, Romania. Western cities that topped the online antisemitism list were Paris and London.

This is relevant research. It would be useful to know where Vancouver or Canada falls in such a ranking. That kind of information could help our community work with governments and other agencies to address the topic and devote resources to education and countering hatred.

But information is power. And power can corrupt. There is a difference between accumulating information that is (or can be) anonymized to allow for research into the topic. It is also fair to use such a system to identify individuals who should be reported to authorities for investigation for potential contravention of hate laws or for exhibiting potential for violence. But the words from Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry Naftali Bennett were not reassuring. According to the Times of Israel, Bennett said the system would expose online antisemites “for all to see.”

“The time has come to put a mirror in front of our haters and expose the ugly face of modern antisemitism,” Bennett went on. “From now on, we’ll know who every antisemitic inciter is.”

Anyone who has spent time online and confronted the sorts of nastiness that exists there might find a sort of satisfaction at the idea that some of the people who are purveying the worst Jew-hatred will no longer get off scot-free. But let’s take a step back.

It is one thing for an intelligence agency – or a responsible nongovernmental organization such as the Southern Poverty Law Centre – to accumulate information like this for the purposes of research, monitoring dangers and notifying appropriate authorities. It would be quite another if, as Bennett seems to suggest, a government (or other agency) were to make public an online database of people who express offensive or racist comments online.

There is a website called Canary Mission, which, according to its self-definition, “documents people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses.”

The site is a compendium of individuals who have made comments online or been seen at events of various types and includes links to their LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages.

Some of the comments Canary Mission has assembled are indeed disturbing. “I swear if [a] Jew gets within 5 feet from me at the protest and says a word, straight murder,” one person wrote. “Ima kill a jew in a month,” wrote another.

There is also no doubt that, among these people, most of whom are university students, are some who have been drawn into anti-Israel movements and have made, as many of us do, occasional untoward comments on social media. It may be fine to call these comments out, but it is not acceptable to assemble in one place a group of people who vary widely – from those who should be reported to authorities for posing a danger to society to some who are probably legitimately attempting to make a peaceful political statement, however misguided we may think that message is.

This approach encourages vigilantism. It is the sort of tactic that has been used in the past by anti-abortion terrorists who have murdered or attempted to murder healthcare providers, including one right here in Vancouver who was shot through a window in his home.

Consider – and there is absolutely no reason to view this as far-fetched – that a website was set up to aggregate information about you, your parents, your children and anyone else you know who has traveled to Israel, donated to Zionist causes or attended pro-Israel events. There are a lot of irrational people in the world and a project like this could help them act out in potentially catastrophic ways.

Again, there is value and importance in accumulating this information. It should be shared with relevant authorities, including the universities, police, FBI, CSIS and so forth. But we should not be encouraging the public dissemination of this material. It is an extremely hazardous game.

An Israeli internet hit

Renny Grinshpan’s videos have gained quite an audience. (photo from Renny Grinshpan)

Born and raised in Toronto, Renny Grinshpan is the daughter of an Israeli-born dad and a Toronto-born mom. Her sister, Eden, works as a host on the food scene in Canada and the United States and recently hosted Top Chef Canada. For her part, Grinshpan is a bit of a celebrity herself – in Israel.

After finishing high school in Toronto, Grinshpan moved to New York City, where she studied history at New York University before heading to Columbia University to pursue her master’s in journalism. After six years in New York, she moved to Tel Aviv to be with her Israeli partner, Hadar Amar, and they still live there. This past June, the couple was married.

“Hadar and I met through a mutual friend at a bar in Tel Aviv,” she said. “We now live together in Tel Aviv. He works in strategic consulting.”

Grinshpan has been in Tel Aviv for about three years. “When I came here,” she said, “I worked as a content writer for Tross Creative House for a year. My boss there, Yaniv Tross, encouraged me to quit and start on-camera work, so I did. He cast me in my first video – a crowdfunding video for a start-up product that works against period cramps (Livia). Since then, I’ve been working as a freelance host, content creator and actor.”

Grinshpan became known in Israel’s comedy scene for her role on HaIsraeliot (the Israeli Girls), a Facebook page with female Israeli comedians, including Leah Lev and Meital Avni.

“I don’t do live shows,” said Grinshpan. “I tried stand-up comedy and realized it’s the scariest thing ever … and I am no adrenaline junkie!”

In her Facebook videos, Grinshpan delves into different aspects of Israeli culture from a Canadian perspective. As a relatively new olah (immigrant), these observations come naturally for her.

“I think my main audience is Israeli women,” she said. “It makes sense to me that Israelis are my biggest audience, because I think everyone enjoys hearing about themselves the most, especially from an outsider’s perspective.”

Grinshpan gained experience in video during her journalism studies at Columbia, where she focused on video journalism and learned how to film, edit and build a narrative visually.

“I made several short documentary-style videos that year and the year following,” she said. “When I worked at Tross, I got experience writing creatively for the first time – writing scripts for product and crowdfunding videos for start-ups.

“When I started freelancing after Tross, I worked not only as an actor and host, but also continued working as a content writer and videographer behind the scenes. I also worked as a model and voiceover actor – anything to earn a living in the creative video realm!”

Grinshpan has spent some time as a visitor in Vancouver and had much good to say about the experience. “I love Vancouver!” she said. “Thank you for giving me some of the best times!

“Being a tourist in Vancouver made me feel like I’m really athletic, which could not be farther from the truth! I found that, in touring the city, I was biking through Stanley Park (it’s a forest!), hiking up a waterfall in North Van, trying out long-boarding for the first time and canoeing again (like in my childhood). I was so active just by being there, which, again, is not reflective of my standard state.”

Looking ahead, Grinshpan said she dreams of co-hosting a food and travel talk show across Israel or Canada with her big sister one day.

To follow or see more of Grinshpan, visit facebook.com/heyitsrenny or check out youtube.com/watch?v=d9pPtsFplaI and youtube.com/watch?v=nYKvpVlOVmU.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.