israel-palestine

US chipmaker Nvidia and its employees have donated $15 million to Israeli non-profit organisations that are supporting civilians affected by Israel's war with Palestinian militant group Hamas.Thousands of employees from more than 30 countries donated a total of $5 million, which the company matched and doubled to $10 million under a special programme introduced to help those affected by the war, Nvidia said on Sunday.Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill CoursesOffering CollegeCourseWebsiteIndian School of…

As the war between Israel and Hamas drags on, many on both sides have taken to social media to gather information and air their outrage. The impulse to do so is understandable: Political activism on social media provides people with an emotional outlet and gives them a sense that they can do something. The war is awful, and following it generates a sharp psychological need to get involved and do something.In the past few years, my colleagues and I at UMass Boston’s Applied Ethics Center have been studying the ethics of…

The controversial Israeli spyware maker NSO Group hints Israel has been searching for hostages using Pegasus, its notorious spyware platform linked to rampant human rights abuses. The claim comes as the tech firm mounts a renewed push to get its name off of a U.S. government blacklist.Even after an agreement reached between Israel and Hamas on Wednesday to release 50 hostages, there are still more than 180 hostages who remain—which, if NSO’s suggestions are true, would point to a key role for Pegasus in the Israel-Hamas…

As the war in Gaza drags on, the region’s telecommunications infrastructure has repeatedly buckled under the weight of bombings, fuel shortages, and apparent efforts by the Israeli military to cut off internet access in the region. These blackouts have, time and again, thrust the more than two million people in Gaza into a communications black hole, threatening to exacerbate the already dire humanitarian crisis. Just last week, the United Nations announced it was halting humanitarian operations in the region, after Gaza’s…

Someone tracking the conflict raging in the Middle East could have seen the following two videos on social media. The first shows a little boy hovering over his father’s dead body, whimpering in Arabic, “Don’t leave me.” The second purports to show a pregnant woman with her stomach slashed open and claims to document the testimony of a paramedic who handled victims’ bodies after Hamas’ attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.Even though these videos come from different sides of the Israel-Hamas war, what they share far exceeds…

The Israel-Hamas conflict has been a minefield of confusing counter-arguments and controversies—and an information environment that experts investigating mis- and disinformation say is among the worst they’ve ever experienced.In the time since Hamas launched its terror attack against Israel last month—and Israel has responded with a weekslong counterattack—social media has been full of comments, pictures, and video from both sides of the conflict putting forward their case. But alongside real images of the battles going…

X’s substandard content moderation has come into even sharper relief with the explosion of violence in Israel and Gaza over the past five weeks. In fact, a new study suggests that the platform is unable or unwilling to delete posts that defy its own community rules on hate and misinformation.The nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) says it flagged 200 tweets concerning the Israel-Gaza conflict that clearly violated X’s own rules prohibiting racist slurs, dehumanization, and hateful imagery. A week after…