“The railways in themselves aren’t bad, but all the people that worked on the railways and let it happen… I see the internet in a similar way.”
She was speaking at a conference organised by StandWithUs, an antisemitism educational charity, attended by 150 pupils from the Yavneh College, JFS and Immanuel College Jewish schools.
Calls to Jewish Women's Aid are down following the terrorist attacks on October 7 in Israel
Its aim, organisers said, was to provide students with the ability to tackle misinformation and hatred online. Statistics provided to Cyberwell, a not-for-profit that collects examples of antisemitism online, by Bright Data revealed that last year less than a quarter of antisemitic posts were removed by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Antisemitism online peaked after Kanye West made a string of posts attacking Jews last October, with this kind of content increasing by almost 130 per cent.
Riley said: “The internet itself isn’t bad, but if all this stuff is being spread, you think about the pandemic and how quickly being around people you can spread a disease. Antisemitism is a disease, it’s a virus. You can reach millions of people at the press of a button.
“Instagram, for instance. You might search for one particular conspiracy theory — a completely unrelated one — and then they will push anti-Jewish conspiracy theories at you,” she added.
“They will actively say, you know, you might be interested in this. They’re making money out of it. The stuff they’re making money from is completely disgusting.”
She also discussed the online abuse she faced after speaking out about antisemitism in the Labour Party.
“I did what I thought was an anodyne post about it, and the level of abuse and response and antisemitic comments that I got back was really eye-opening,” she said.
“You post one thing and you just get this deluge of people being emboldened to say the most awful things.”
Pupils at the conference said they had regularly been targeted online with comments attacking Israel.
“People reply to me saying ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’,” said one student.
However, others said their greater fears came from abuse they received face-to-face.
“My cousin and I were in a religious area recently,” said another pupil at the event.
“Someone screamed at us, ‘F**k you Jews.’"
A Meta spokesperson told the JC: “We don't want antisemitism on Facebook or Instagram and we certainly don’t want to recommend it. We’ve always removed attacks against people based on their religion and ethnicity, and in recent years we’ve made important updates to our policies, including to remove any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust, as well as more implicit hate speech, such as harmful stereotypes that Jewish people control the world.
"We want everyone to feel safe and welcome on our apps, and will continue to work to help protect our community from abuse.”
