Palestinian activists complain about social media bias

– RAMALLAH, Palestine (AA) – Scores of Palestinian activists continue to complain about bias by social media platforms as they face growing restrictions, with much of their content being blocked or removed.

The activists said social media platforms have intensified monitoring of Palestinian content and blocked accounts that show sympathy with Palestinians in the wake of the fighting between Palestinian groups and Israel.

The Sada Social Center, an organization dedicated to monitoring and documenting digital violations against Palestine content online, said social media platforms removed thousands of posts and accounts since October 7.

Nada Basyouni, media coordinator for the Sada Social Center, said the Palestinian narrative is exposed to real dangers as social media platforms and governments remove Palestinian content from the digital memory of users.

“The measures to fight the Palestinian narrative are taken by a political decision from governments, and then implemented by these social media platforms, consistent with the Israeli occupation,” Basyouni said.

She cited Facebook’s parent company, Meta, classifying “from sea to river” as anti-Semitic.

– Meta removes Palestinian content

After three days of fighting since the outbreak, Meta said on October 13 that it “removed or marked as disturbing more than 795,000 pieces of content for violating” its policies.

It said it blocked several hashtags on Instagram because hashtags, mostly pro-Palestinian ones, violate community guidelines.

Meta’s statement followed the US stance which firmly and absolutely stood by Israel and fully adopted its narrative in describing the Hamas’ military operation as “terrorist attacks.”

Basyouni said Instagram blocked several pro-Palestine hashtags including #طوفان_الأقصى, or Al-Aqsa Flood.

– Inflammatory posts

The Sada Social Center said it documented more than 8,000 inflammatory posts in the Hebrew language against Palestinians on social media platforms.

The posts include incitement to kill and annihilate Palestinians, yet, they still exist, it said.

Basyouni noted that Meta also removed the option to object to restricted access — meaning it will not review the restricted posts or accounts it removes.

“These measures contribute to obliterating the Palestinian narrative,” said Basyouni. “These measures are a big obstacle to reaching the truth.”

– Quds News Network

The chief editor of the Quds News Network (QNN), Yousef Abu Watfa, said Meta removed QNN’s Facebook pages under the pretext of several previous violations.

He said that QNN’s Arabic language Facebook page, which was liked and followed by 10 million, and the English language page, liked and followed by more than a million, were removed, citing policy violations.

He said QNN reached out to groups working in the field of digital rights to help retrieve the removed Facebook pages, but Meta insisted on the accusation of violating the company’s policies and guidelines.

“QNN believes what happened, and still happening, is related to the pressure by the (Israeli) occupation government on all the social media platforms,” said Abu Watfa.