Meta Fires Employee Over Complaining About Supressing Posts Of Palestinians Including Motaza Azaiza (image@RegionNormandy)
Motaz Azaiza, the Palestinian photo journalist, who recently won the World Press Freedom Prize, has been grabbing headlines for his brave and ground breaking coverage while he was in Gaza. His social media posts were window to the gory and barbaric realities forced down upon the Palestinians by the Israeli occupation force. He was evacuated from the coastal enclave in January this year.
That was the first time he travelled out of Gaza, and within 24 hours of stepping foot outside of his beloved homeland, he started to speak up for Palestine again, this time from out side. After reaching up to the headquarters of United Nations, Azaiza also came to the conclusion that, “its not about October 7th”.
Azaiza is a noted figure globally by both pro-Palestinian supporters and pro-Israeli supporters. While supporters took him as inspiring, pro-Israeli supporters labelled Azaiza as a threat. Motaz Azaiza’s social media accounts has faced issues many times before. He was not able to post some of his images and videos in the name of violating community guidelines of the platform, or he was not able to post stories on Instagram.
Now Palestinian-American engineer named Ferras Hamad is suing Meta, his former employer, claiming that he was fired for trying to fix bugs that suppressed Instagram posts about Palestine and Gaza, as reported by Reuters.
According to Reuters, Hamad claimed that he was terminated after he tried to address irregularities in the handling of posts by Palestinian Instagram personalities, including Motaz Azaiza. Hamad alleges that one of the videos shared by Azaiza was “misclassified” as pornography even though the video showed destroyed buildings in Gaza.
In a complaint filed at state court in California, Hamad said that he believed he might have been sacked after he noted irregularities in troubleshooting procedures where posts from Palestinian Instagram personalities were prevented from appearing in searches and feeds.
Meta told Hamad that he was fired for violating a policy barring employees from working on issues with accounts of people they know personally, referring to Azaiza. Hamad said he had no personal connection with Azaiza. Meta did not respond to Reuters request to comment. Meta had messed with Azaiza before. taking to his X (formerly twitter), Azaiza said, “I am banned from Facebook”.
Azaiza was given the Freedom Prize for his coverage of Gaza war. Based in Gaza for several months of Israel’s war on Gaza, Azaiza played crucial role in letting the outside world understand the depth of brutality drilled down on the innocent civilians of Gaza by Israel.
As per the organisers, the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize is given based on votes. The Freedom Prize invites individuals aged between 15 and 25 from France and around the world to choose an inspiring figure or organization that has been putting up an exemplary fight for freedom.
The French Jews in Normandy decry the Region of Normandy’s decision honour the Palestinian journalist, as reported by The Times Of Israel. Taking to their social media account, the region wrote that, “fight for the right to information, which allows him to broadcast information on the conflict, telling the story of the fate of populations affected by this war”.
