Israel says it's close to victory in Northern Gaza military officials announcing they're on the verge of defeating the last remaining Hamas militants in their two largest strongholds in the north and discovering over 1500 tunnels meanwhile the Israeli government is negotiating for the release of 40 more hostages in what could be another week-long ceasefire as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is worsening with reports coming out of people in the region starving going days without food here in New Jersey congressman Frank colone held a Roundtable with Jewish Community leaders to discuss the failures of social media companies to regulate the hate speech and misinformation that's flooded their platforms since the start of the war Ted Goldberg was there and has more on poon's calls for a clear action plan from these companies congressman Frank palone returned to the JCC of middlex County for a conversation with leaders in the Jewish Community about anti-semitic misinformation on social media this comes 2 months after holding a news conference here to chastise social media companies for not enforcing their terms of service and allowing hate to spread these social media platforms do purport that they will not allow that type of thing and that they have people on staff who will take it down or prevent it from being put up and yet we found that that was simply not true last week palone sent letters to meta Tik Tok YouTube and X formerly known as Twitter asking each site about how they moderate content two months after repres resentatives from each platform spoke with poon's Energy and Commerce Committee we were not satisfied in any way I mean in other words the concerns that we had about the lack of policing if that's the word the lack of people that were actually doing this uh the attention being paid to it was very meager in particular palone said X was very hands-off in keeping misinformation and hate from going viral they basically said that they're for they're focusing on getting their users to act as unpaid content moderators in other words they were relying on all of us to police rather than doing it themselves um and I think that that's totally irresponsible viral posts have shown violence from previous conflicts and said it was filmed in Israel while artificial intelligence and video game footage have also been used to create fake videos of the war it's so easy to just create a bunch of you know just an alternate reality and as a society I don't understand how we can live in without some sense of shared reality we know that a lot of this is being organized by our enemies right we know it's been organized by Iran by Russia they're looking to start with anti-Semitism and to see okay we can infiltrate we can get these young people to believe this garbage and falsehoods that's great now we know how we're going to infiltrate the rest of the country palone admits that the first amendment is a significant obstacle in regulating social media and speakers say misinformation might prove an exception to the first amendment's broad protections the first amendment is sacred and yet our courts have found instances where it limits the first amendment when National Security is at risk we all understand where the line gets crossed into hate I I I'm I'm not sure that that's blurred any longer so there's a big difference in my mind between someone going out onto the street corner and just lying if that's what they feel like they're doing versus getting paid for it by a a a a large Media company which then also profits off of it speakers also blam social media sites for not doing enough to stop harassment which has only gotten worse for Jewish and Palestinian users since October 7th teenagers are at large are just struggling in this time right now um because everyone around them is saying well you're lying or you're not right and you're you're in the wrong the news that they believe is fiction um that's all coming from social media uh it just makes me worry she's not the only person worried has leaders and families try to avoid toxic content on social media with no easy answers in sight in Edison I'm Ted Goldberg NJ Spotlight news