The Algorithm Against the Jews
For generations, antisemitism spread through whispered conspiracies, newspapers, radio broadcasts, and state propaganda. Today, it spreads at the speed of an algorithm. The battlefield has changed. The question is whether we have.
A new report from the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s Antisemitism Research Center should be a wake-up call for every Jewish leader, philanthropist, and organization in the world. Researchers found that antisemitic content on Instagram is nearly seven times more likely to go viral than comparable non-antisemitic content. A prior study by the same center documented how Instagram’s recommendation algorithm actively exposed users who had never searched for antisemitic material to hateful content, giving just 100 antisemitic posts an estimated potential reach of up to 280 million people.
These findings confirm what many of us have sensed since October 7: antisemitism is no longer spreading only because people create hateful content. It is spreading because platforms are amplifying it at a scale and speed that no counter-messaging campaign, no matter how well-funded or well-worded, was designed to match.
We are trying to out-argue a machine. No community, not even one as resilient and resourceful as ours, wins that battle using the strategies we relied on twenty years ago.
Israel became known as the Start-Up Nation because it refused to accept impossible problems. When conventional security doctrine couldn’t stop missile attacks, Israel built the Iron Dome. When adversaries developed new forms of warfare, Israel built new forms of defense. The pattern is consistent: identify the threat clearly, assemble the right talent, and build a solution that didn’t exist before.
Why aren’t we applying that same instinct to digital antisemitism?
Because the problem is solvable. Not easily, and not quickly, but solvable by exactly the kind of talent the Jewish world already has in abundance. Israel’s AI researchers, software engineers, and behavioral scientists. Its universities and its entrepreneurs. The data scientists and technologists throughout the diaspora who have built companies, shaped platforms, and understand how these systems work from the inside. The problem is not the absence of talent. It is the absence of a coordinated, well-capitalized mandate to turn that talent toward this specific challenge.
Imagine a Digital Iron Dome: a dedicated initiative that studies how online hate spreads in real time, develops tools to interrupt its amplification before it reaches scale, identifies emerging antisemitic narratives before they explode into the mainstream, and equips Jewish organizations with actionable intelligence rather than last week’s headlines.
What would that require? University research partnerships generating peer-reviewed data on algorithmic amplification that platforms cannot ignore. AI laboratories developing detection tools that work faster than human moderators can. Startup accelerators funding entrepreneurs building the next generation of counter-narrative technology. A shared data infrastructure that lets Jewish organizations see the same threat landscape in real time instead of each one operating with incomplete information. Advocacy teams armed with technical evidence capable of engaging directly with platform engineers and regulators on the specific algorithmic choices that make hateful content spread faster than accurate content.
None of this is science fiction. The talent exists. The technology exists. What is missing is the will to treat this as the emergency it is, and the investment to match that urgency.
For decades, Jewish philanthropy has generously supported education, security, advocacy, and the institutions that have sustained Jewish life across generations. Those investments remain indispensable. But philanthropy that only preserves what we built yesterday is not enough for the moment we are in today.
If algorithms have become one of the most powerful drivers of antisemitism, and the data now says unambiguously that they have, then building the tools to understand, interrupt, and counter those algorithms should be a philanthropic priority, not a theoretical future project.
What if even a fraction of the billions donated annually to Jewish causes were directed into a dedicated digital defense fund? Foundations could seed university research centers studying algorithmic amplification of hate. Jewish family offices could fund startup accelerators with a specific mandate to develop counternarrative and detection technology. Federations could pool resources to build the shared data infrastructure that no single organization can afford on its own. Major donors could endow chairs at leading computer science and behavioral science departments whose sole focus is this problem.
The Jewish world has never lacked for brilliant minds or generous donors. What we have sometimes lacked is the willingness to bring them together around a challenge before it becomes a crisis. On this one, we are already past that threshold. The crisis is here. The question is whether the investment follows.
The organizations doing conventional antisemitism response work are doing it well, and they deserve our continued support. But we cannot respond to a seven-times amplification advantage with op-eds and awareness campaigns alone. We need the equivalent of what Israel built when conventional air defense wasn’t enough: something new, purpose-built for the threat we face.
The algorithm doesn’t wait. It runs twenty-four hours a day, amplifying content that took seconds to create and reaching audiences we will never have the chance to counter-program once the narrative takes hold. Every day we debate whether this is a philanthropic priority, it is already someone else’s infrastructure.
The battlefield has changed. It is time our philanthropy changed with it.
