Facebook suspends Benjamin Netanyahu’s chatbot for violating hate speech policies

Jerusalem: Social media giant Facebook on Thursday suspended a chatbot operated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official page for violating “hate speech policies”, after a message spread by his campaign warned that Arab Israeli politicians “want to annihilate us all”, a media report here said.

A spokesperson for Facebook told Times of Israel that the bot was temporarily suspended for 24 hours and that action would also be taken against any possible future violations of the company’s policy.

“After careful review of the Likud campaign’s bot activities, we found a violation of our hate speech policy. We also found that the bot was misusing the platform in the time period allowed to contact people. As a result, we temporarily suspended the bot for 24 hours. Should there be any additional violations, we will continue to take appropriate action,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying.