Entrepreneurs David Kristal & David Burton Launch “Emissary,” New Platform To Fight Antisemitism Online

David Kristal and David Burton, close friends and Minnesota Jewish entrepreneurs, often take walks together on the weekends.

Normally, they catch up about family, work, and life happenings. But in the wake of Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Kristal and Burton spent their walks processing the aftermath.

“We were profoundly shocked at the formation of protests in this country, before Israel had even amassed troops on the border of Gaza, insisting that Israel not…defend itself,” Burton said. “That was a phenomenon that was really unimaginable, and we wanted to understand its roots.”

For the two friends, the answer came quickly: Social media – where over half of Americans sometimes or often get their news. Social platforms are perhaps today’s primary battleground for public opinion.

“That’s where so much antisemitism, hate, disinformation proliferates, and that’s where we wanted to do something” to address that, Burton said.

So in early 2024, Kristal and Burton launched Emissary, an app platform intended to help Jews and non-Jews alike push back against online hate.

“One of the conclusions we’ve made is that it’s not just the responsibility of the Jewish people to eradicate antisemitism, but that it’s a job for all of us,” Kristal said. “We have to fight hate in all of its forms – even though our focal point, for sure, is antisemitism, given what’s happening across the globe right now.”

The Minneapolis Jewish Federation is the fiscal sponsor of Emissary, which has raised about $1 million from outside donors to grow its infrastructure. Emissary is in the process of getting its official nonprofit status, with a projected annual budget of $2-3 million.

At the core of Emissary is an app with a curated stream of informational posts about Jews, antisemitism, and Israel from various social media platforms, including Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn. Users can quickly reshare those posts to their own social media feeds.

“If we’re going to achieve this multi-year mega mission to fight antisemitism and hate in social media, it has to be real people, real information, sharing to [other] real people,” Kristal said. “No bots, none of that stuff.”

But Emissary faces a steep uphill climb to reach success. Social media platforms are axing content moderation efforts, unleashing a new wave of divisive online speech, while AI-generated content swamps and overwhelms real human interactions.

Meanwhile, what people see online, and how information travels, is heavily dependent on opaque social media algorithms that silos users. Those algorithms spread disinformation widely, and are alternatively accused of being biased for and against Israel.

Still, the Emissary co-founders are holding out hope that their effort won’t be in vain. By getting enough users, they aim to turn the tide of antisemitism online. Burton has even met with an Israeli TikTok whistleblower to understand issues with social media algorithms.

“There is a high volume [of hateful posts] from not a high volume of people on social media, and it has a disproportionate impact, and it creates this perception that the average person is hateful,” Burton said.

“I don’t believe that to be the case, so I think the numbers will work with us and not against us, despite the existence of algorithms that try to silo everyone,” he said.

The app

Often, when someone is trying to influence social media, they default to a short list of options: Pay for advertising targeting specific users, and/or pay for influencers to spread a particular message.

Rarely do campaigns of any kind – educational, political, or marketing – decide to create their own app for users.

So why did Emissary take that route? A combination of mission and convenience, Kristal and Burton said.

They needed a way to let people easily reshare information about antisemitism on social media – and didn’t have to look far for a solution.

Kristal is the founder and CEO of Augeo, a company that provides software for customer loyalty, employer workplace recognition, and business community programs for Fortune 500 companies.

As part of that work, Augeo built an influencer app, designed for employees to spread positive messaging about the companies they work for across social platforms. Kristal calls it “organic influencing, which is the most authentic form of advocacy.”

Emissary is a repackaged and simplified version of Augeo’s influencer app. Kristal said that many staff and engineers at Augeo have worked pro-bono on the project, though Emissary does have paid staff.

Last year, Emissary hired Laura Zelle, formerly the director of Holocaust education at the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas. Zelle is now Emissary’s director of content and oversees the U.S.-based team aggregating the social media posts that appear in the Emissary app, which users can then reshare.

“This is a battle that we think will take many years in which to engage, and hopefully, succeed,” Kristal said. “So we need to build Emissary for longevity and sustainability…notwithstanding all of our pro bono contributions.”

For Kristal and Burton, Emissary’s app lets their work be platform independent, and not beholden to any particular social media company.

“Anyone who’s on Instagram, and that’s where they spend their whole life, then they’re only getting information that’s presented on Instagram,” Burton said. “But that isn’t the totality of quality and important information as it relates to antisemitism, and as a result, we’re the aggregator of quality information across all platforms and all media sources.”

TC Jewfolk made a test profile to log in and see the Emissary app directly (the app can also be used without making a profile).

While Emissary is not sharing much user data, a blurb in the Emissary app said that “posts from our program have been seen an estimated [4 million] times.” The app, which is also designed with a ranking system to gamify social media sharing, put TC Jewfolk’s test account at 4th place out of 332 users when checked on Jan. 21.

Much of Emissary’s feed is made up of X posts from news organizations like The Jerusalem Post, The Jewish Chronicle, eJewishPhilanthropy, and Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Combat Antisemitism Movement.

Users might not be happy with every post, video, or perspective in the curated feed, but that’s par for the course in today’s polarized age. If users dislike something, they don’t have to reshare it – Emissary isn’t about forcing a particular view or stance, Kristal said.

“Core to what we’re doing is education,” he said. “It is advocacy to a degree, but we’re not advocating as to whether Netanyahu is right or wrong relative to what he’s doing in Gaza. When it comes to antisemitism, when it comes to hate, you choose a side.”

But the app is clearly hamstrung by the arbitrary barriers of social media platforms. While users can log in and connect Emissary directly to X, LinkedIn, and TikTok to reshare posts, Facebook and Instagram (run by Meta) require a business account to share content from an external source like Emissary.

An Instagram business account may have a limited reach, while a Facebook business account means creating a page and trying to regain the many followers and friends that a personal profile may have naturally gained over many years.

Kristal said the Emissary app is still being developed, and that those technical limitations can be overcome. For the moment, the Emissary team is trying to keep the user experience streamlined and simple.

“It’s a process…the most important thing is to build validity, trust and confidence, and if we get too far ahead of ourselves, we could diminish our ultimate success,” Kristal said.

Kristal also makes the case that the Emissary app is a philanthropist’s dream for return on investment in fighting antisemitism.

“As we move from thousands, to hundreds of thousands, to millions of users, our operating costs don’t really increase that much,” he said. “Right now, there’s no plan to do paid media. It’s not that we may not at some point, but right now we’re not. And so our operating costs are relatively flat.”

Expanding the platform

Emissary is about more than just social media sharing, though. The platform now has a chatbot – named Ask Emissary – based on ChatGPT but trained on resources about Judaism, Israel, and antisemitism.

The chatbot’s answers tend to give brief overviews, with caveats and careful wording. For example, TC Jewfolk asked Ask Emissary if being anti-Israel is antisemitic.

“Criticism of Israel is not inherently antisemitic, as political viewpoints can vary widely,” it said. “However, when such criticism devolves into denying the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, using classic antisemitic tropes, or delegitimizing Israel’s very existence, it can cross the line into antisemitism.”

At the end was an uplifting statement (a feature on all answers): “Promoting dialogue and understanding is key to overcoming divisions and building a just future for all.”

Often, Ask Emissary will cite information from the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee.

For Burton, Ask Emissary is about making information accessible to users. The chatbot could be a resource to college students, for example, trying to navigate campus issues around Israel.

“When you think of people’s first place that they go when they have an issue or a need: it’s their pocket – they go to their phone,” he said. “So if we’re not there with the easiest and most informative tool, then they may go to something that is less helpful.”

Emissary also recently added a feed of local news stories, tailored to users’ locations.

For the moment, the feed is based on a Google News aggregation tool, but other feeds could be added. For the moment, publications in the local news feed range from the NY Post and National Review to the Detroit and Boulder Jewish News.

“Potential future use cases exist for local organizations to submit requests for features in the Local News feeds to continue to increase relevancy,” said an emailed message from Emissary’s engineering and product team.

Finally, Kristal sees Emissary as a way to help bridge the many initiatives and organizations trying to fight antisemitism.

Many ask for donations or put on events, but there are few easy and low-barrier ways for people to get involved – let alone digital-native ways.

Now, organizations can simply tell their constituents to “download this app; you can actually, daily and actively, join the fight against antisemitism and more broadly, hate,” Kristal said. “Emissary sits in a really unique spot to start to bring together and create unification [among disparate efforts].”

But Kristal and Burton are clear-eyed that Emissary is a long-term project, and it will take time for it to make an impact.

They believe in the power of real people sharing information with their network online, no matter the uncertainties of social media platforms and the digital information age.

“The fact is, succeed or fail, this is as important as any work we’ve ever done in our careers, and we’re all in,” Kristal said.

“As entrepreneurs, we don’t know whether we’re going to be successful. All we can do is put our best foot forward every day, and we are really privileged and very grateful to be in a position to at least attempt what we’re attempting with Emissary.”