Netizens Criticise Meta For Censorship Of Pro-Palestinian Posts (Image: Pixabay)
Amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, multiple social media users have reported restrictions on their accounts due to their pro-Palestinian posts. Netizens severely criticised Meta”s censorship move, as several accounts and posts have been banned or suspended.
Arab News reported that the TikTok account of a news and analysis account named Mondoweiss had been temporarily taken down recently. Mondoweiss is a news platform dedicated to Palestine. Earlier On October 10, the Instagram account of the Palestinian correspondent of Mondoweiss was suspended, and later it was reinstated. Several other Instagram users have also complained regarding the restrictions on their accounts. Some users earlier claimed that their posts on Palestine were being “shadow-banned” by the Meta-owned Instagram. Shadowbanning means blocking a user’s social media content in such a way that they are unaware that it’s happening.
It is confirmed my videos on Instagram, when shared by thousands through stories, are completely inaccessible and do not play. This is shadow banning and dramatically limits the reach of ppl like me reporting real news.
Stop silencing Palestinians. @Meta @instagram pic.twitter.com/4OP1vOFCdb
— AHMED | أحمد (@ASE) October 12, 2023
A London-based user had posted Instagram stories regarding Palestine that only received up to five views within a couple of hours, Arab News reported. However, when the same user posted a normal image, she got 91 views in 40 minutes. However, on the other hand, tech giant Meta declined all the claims of censorship to this matter. A Meta spokesperson told Arab News that censorship on pro-Palestinian posts is categorically untrue. Earlier in 2022, an NGO named Sada Social Centre stated that 425 violations and acts of censorship against Palestinian content online had been documented throughout the first half of 2022. According to this NGO, Facebook is the social networking site that suppressed Palestinian content the most in the first half of 2022. Sada Social Centre, an NGO that monitors social networking sites, informed that the majority of violations against Palestinian content on various platforms vary from restricting posts to removing or suspending accounts.
