Facebook Blocks Comments From Non-Friends for Israeli Posts

The war online. Facebook decided to temporarily update company policy and change the default settings of public Israeli posts, with only friends able to comment.

The change came in the wake of hateful and threatening commands received by Israelis on the social network whenever they put up public posts. Facebook subsequently changed the default comment permissions, though users can still manually change them back.

Yesterday (Monday) the Israel Police published a recommendation for citizens to change their private WhatsApp settings, such that they could not be added to groups without their approval. The recommendation came due to the adding of many phone numbers to WhatsApp groups which publish anti-Israel contents.

The statement read: “In the past few hours, the cyber unit at Lahav 433 was exposed to an extensive trend of adding Israeli phone accounts to various WhatsApp groups, which display serious activity and contents against the State of Israel.”

It also stated that “investigators of the Lahav 433 cyber unit recommend accounts change the security settings in their WhatsApp account, such that they can no longer be added automatically to WhatsApp groups. The Israel Police recommends not joining groups based on requests from unfamiliar parties.”