Meta reportedly suppressing pro-Palestinian posts – 10/18/2023 – World

Thousands of Palestinian supporters say their posts have been suppressed or removed from Facebook and Instagram, even though the messages do not violate the platforms’ rules.

Meta, owner of the two social networks, said that some of these posts were hidden from view due to an accidental bug in the company’s systems. In particular, messages of support for Palestinian civilians, many of whom have been displaced, injured or killed by Israeli airstrikes, were being hidden from the platforms, users said.

Some people also reported that Facebook suppressed accounts that called for peaceful protests in cities across the United States, including demonstrations planned in the San Francisco Bay Area over the weekend.

Aya Omar, an artificial intelligence engineer, told The New York Times that she was unable to view Palestinian media accounts that she reads regularly because Meta and Instagram were blocking them. She said people were seeing a sanitized version of events that took place in Gaza.

“Instagram and Facebook are actively blocking posts about the factual history of Israel/Palestine, sometimes disguising this as a ‘technical difficulty,'” said the Hampton Institute, a think tank, in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday (15).

Meta warned that some posts may be temporarily suppressed or suspended while it implements measures to deal with large numbers of reports of graphic content. In some cases, the company said, there were technical difficulties that suppressed posts that should have been widely visible.

“We identified a bug affecting all stories sharing reels and feed posts, meaning they weren’t appearing correctly to people, resulting in significantly reduced reach,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. post on X on Sunday. “This bug affected accounts equally across the world and had nothing to do with the subject matter of the content — and we fixed it as quickly as possible.”

A hashtag, #Zionistigram, which was associated with posts critical of Instagram’s suppression of pro-Palestinian content, appears to have been temporarily suppressed over the weekend, returning no results when searching for the term.

Many Palestinian supporters migrated to other platforms to spread their messages, while criticizing Meta’s content moderation. LinkedIn, used primarily for professional networking, has seen an increase in the number of posts critical of Israel’s response to Hamas and in support of civilian casualties in Gaza.

Others posted in the comments of posts from widely followed Instagram and Facebook accounts, asking for support. Comments on the most recent post by Beyoncé, whose Instagram account has more than 318 million followers, were flooded with Palestinian and Israeli supporters trying to drum up support for her causes.

Many of these messages were copied and pasted for wider circulation on Instagram and Facebook.

In a blog post last week, Meta said it applies its content policies equally.

“We want to reiterate that our policies are designed to give everyone a voice while keeping people safe on our apps,” the company said. “We apply these policies regardless of who is posting or their personal beliefs, and it is never our intention to suppress a specific community or viewpoint.”

Meta also recognized that its policies may not always be implemented perfectly, especially in times of global crisis.

“Given the increased volumes of content reported to us, we know that content that does not violate our policies may be removed in error,” the company said.