A TikTok ad moderator has been posting inciting, vile remarks on social media, wishing death to Zionists and calling to make October 7 an international holiday. Zeina Ismail, a Lebanon-born and Ireland-based ad moderator at TikTok, has been seen posing with flags of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The PFLP, which participated in the October 7 massacre and is responsible for multiple plane hijackings, mass shootings, and cold-blooded assassinations of Israelis throughout the years, is designated as a terror group by the US, EU, Israel, and others. Ismail’s posts with the flags included commenting “burn them all!!” to news of trying to set fire to the Israeli embassy in Mexico City, as well as promoting “resistance by all means necessary,” a euphemism known to mean urging armed struggle against Israel.
Ismail’s responsibilities in the capacity of ad moderator can include moderating and ensuring advertising content is compliant with stipulated policies and local laws, moderation of user-generated content (UGC) by capturing screenshots of violations and the tagging of all applicable labels, staying abreast on all policy changes and/or developments, and adhering to defined policies and procedures while meeting performance expectations.
TikTok's response to Ismail's statements
The Jerusalem Post queried TikTok as to whether positions such as Ismail’s were accepted in the company, how the social media giant can ensure that the company’s work ambiance remains safe from workers wishing for the death of other workers, and how the company can make sure that ad and content moderators work professionally without letting their personal beliefs obstruct their work.
The organization said in response: “TikTok does not tolerate antisemitism on our platform or in the workplace and takes any allegations extremely seriously. We have been investigating this issue but cannot comment further while the investigation is ongoing.”
Ismail, whose Instagram account was switched to private mode in the past couple of days, also made some antisemitic accusations, denouncing an alleged “weaponization of the historic suffering of Jewish people to commit the most heinous crimes,” as well as harmful remarks towards Christians and Jews, deeming the Bible “an ancient text written by a genocidal maniac who claimed he was granted someone else’s land by his Sky Daddy.”
The TikTok moderator called several times for an “intifada,” referring to the deadly series of suicide bombings and mass shootings in hotels, cafes, restaurants, tourism areas, and buses that took the lives of thousands of innocent Israelis during the late 1980s and early 2000s.
Israelis have complained for months about TikTok’s policy rejecting Israeli ads, including content related to the issue of the hostages, while pro-Hamas and pro-Palestinian content can be seen being pushed unabatedly.
In December 2023, Fox News published an expose describing how families of hostages held by Hamas attempted to publish ads on TikTok regarding the lives of their loved ones, but the social media giant refused.
The Fox report also quoted an internal memo written by a senior employee at TikTok Israel, which emphasized repeated instances of biased policies against the paid humanitarian campaigns presented by Israeli hostage families, compared to pro-Palestinian groups. The memo also stressed casual biased policies and relatively free access to organic, graphically violent, and deeply inflammatory Pro-Palestinian content that violates part of the company’s community guidelines.
“I have over 18,000 followers on TikTok and my videos have hundreds of thousands of views,” said Ella Kenan, founder of the BrightMind organization that is focused on promoting Israeli awareness in social media, and a popular travel blogger herself. “My least popular videos had 9,000-10,000 views. But ever since I started talking about Israel, my views went down to as low as 17 views. Getting this many views for a following of that size makes no sense.”
Kenan holds that TikTok Israel does not have much to do with this issue. “We tried talking to them, but at the end of the day, it’s an issue of abidance – not anything that TikTok Israel can affect, unfortunately.”
Ellynoy Bar On, an Israeli blogger, said: “When October 7th occurred, it wasn’t only the pain of the grief that took over me, but the world’s reaction was the opposite of what I expected. It wasn’t just seeing all the awful, truth-twisting, pro-Gaza style posts in all possible media; the challenge was to fight back with hasbara [PR outreach].
“However, each attempt got blocked on TikTok. Everything was banned—posts about Father’s Day, posts about celebrations from Gaza, posts of support by famous people like Elon Musk—all were blocked, and I had to appeal each video. Most of the time, nothing helped. Meanwhile, on the other side, I saw the same violent videos circulating the platform by many unbanned users.
“It was so clear,” Bar On said: “It’s hard to ignore the bias.”