The Platforms That Couldn't Count the Hate
Over two days of hearings in Sydney on July 6 and 7, 2026, Australia's Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion pressed Meta, TikTok, YouTube and the livestreaming service Kick on how they police antisemitic content. None of the major platforms, the inquiry heard, could say from their own data whether antisemitism on their services was rising or falling.
Two days in the witness box
The world's largest social platforms faced sustained scrutiny at the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion this month, with representatives of Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Kick confronted with evidence of gaps in the way they moderate and remove antisemitic material, the Australian Jewish News reported. Across two days of hearings in Sydney on 6 and 7 July, Commissioner Virginia Bell heard, in the newspaper's words, a consistent picture: companies that publicly commit to combating hate speech but in practice leave users and community organisations to flag harmful material.
The commission was established after the deadliest terrorist attack in Australia's history, in December 2025, when 15 people were killed during a Hanukkah celebration, according to the Australian Associated Press. It is due to deliver a final report by December, the wire service reported. This month's hearings turned the inquiry toward the platforms themselves, and toward how much hateful content they detect, act on and can measure.
A fall in what gets taken down
Commissioner Bell asked Meta's global director of core policy, Benjamin Good, to explain data presented to the inquiry showing a 79 per cent drop in the amount of hateful content the company had acted on since it loosened its rules, the Australian Jewish News reported. Action on hateful conduct on Facebook fell about 79 per cent after changes announced by chief executive Mark Zuckerberg in January 2025, with a comparable 73 per cent fall on Instagram, the newspaper said.
The removal of hate-speech content on Facebook fell from about 5.8 million items between October and December 2024 to about 1.2 million items between July and September 2025, according to the Australian Computer Society's Information Age, which reported that Good appeared voluntarily by video link from the United States. Good told the commission that over-enforcing its hate-speech rules risked silencing members of the very communities the company was trying to protect, the publication reported.
The gap was not only statistical. At least four antisemitic posts that appeared on Facebook during the inquiry's hearings were not initially found by Meta to have breached its community standards, and were removed only after a review of those decisions was requested, Information Age reported.
The comment a moderator put back
TikTok's global head of policy, trust and safety, Zachary Hecht, travelled from the United States to Sydney to give evidence voluntarily, the Australian Associated Press reported. Accounts inciting violence against Jews would be “banned right away,” potentially after even a single instance of such content, Hecht told the commission, according to the Australian Computer Society's Information Age. He said TikTok automatically removed 98 per cent of harmful content before it could be viewed by users in Australia in the first quarter of the year, AAP reported.
Yet the inquiry also heard that an antisemitic comment correctly blocked by TikTok's automated systems was reinstated by a human moderator on appeal, and taken down only after a community organisation reported it and the matter was escalated, the Australian Jewish News reported. Hecht acknowledged the comment was “clearly a violation” of TikTok's prohibition on hate speech and hateful ideologies, the newspaper said.
TikTok also told the inquiry it had scrubbed footage of the December attack from its platform within about 90 minutes despite having no content moderators based in Australia, AAP reported. Describing how the company escalated its crisis response, TikTok's global head of partnerships, elections and market integrity, Valiant Richey, told the commission: “It's like our basic police force versus a SWAT team.”
What the numbers cannot show
The recurring theme across the testimony was measurement. None of the major platforms could tell the commission, from their own data, whether antisemitism on their services was increasing or decreasing, the Australian Jewish News reported. Enforcement, the inquiry heard, was inconsistent, and the companies relied heavily on users and civil-society groups to surface material rather than detecting it themselves.
Social media platforms had come under scrutiny at earlier sittings as well, SBS News reported. The questions put to Meta and TikTok this month echo a longer-running debate over engagement-driven feeds and reduced moderation: researchers and human-rights bodies have argued that when platforms invest little in detecting hate, the content that provokes the strongest reactions is the content that spreads. The commission's final report, due in December, is expected to weigh what enforceable obligations, if any, should follow.