‘Significant Censorship’ of Palestine on Social Media Sparks Outcry

Date: 24 October 2023 - 21:53

News ID: ۱۲۰۶۷۳

DOHA (Dispatches) – At the end of last week, Thomas Maddens, a filmmaker and activist based in Belgium, noticed something strange. A video about Palestine that he posted to TikTok with the word “genocide” suddenly stopped getting engagement on the platform after an initial spike.
“I thought I would have got millions of views,” Maddens told Al Jazeera, “but the engagement had stopped.”
Maddens is one of the hundreds of social media users who are accusing the world’s largest social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube and TikTok – of censoring accounts or actively reducing the reach of pro-Palestine content, a practice known as shadowbanning.
Authors, activists, journalists, filmmakers and regular users around the world have said posts containing hashtags like “FreePalestine” and “IStandWithPalestine” as well as messages expressing support for civilian Palestinians killed by Zionist troops are being hidden by the platforms.
Some users have also accused Instagram, owned by Meta, of arbitrarily taking down posts that simply mention Palestine for violating “community guidelines”. Others said their Instagram Stories were hidden for sharing information about protests in support of Palestine in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. Some also reportedly complained about the word “terrorist” appearing near their Instagram biographies.
In a post on X on October 15, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone blamed the reduced reach of posts on a bug.
“This bug affected accounts equally around the globe and had nothing to do with the subject matter of the content – and we fixed it as quickly as possible,” Stone wrote.
When asked about the accusations of shadowbanning, Stone pointed Al Jazeera to a blog post that Meta published highlighting its latest efforts in tackling misinformation related to Israel’s war. The post said users who don’t agree with the company’s moderation decisions may appeal.
The BBC reported that Meta apologized for adding the word terrorist to pro-Palestinian accounts, saying the problem that “briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations” has been fixed.
YouTube and X did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.
Civil rights groups aren’t buying the platforms’ denials.
This month, 48 organizations, including 7amleh, the Arab Centre for Social Media Advancement, which advocates for digital rights of Palestinian and Arab civil society, issued a statement urging tech companies to respect Palestinian digital rights during the ongoing war.