Facebook’s & Meta Gaza Censorship

A lot of people posting on Facebook and Instagram, both of which are owned by parent company “Meta”, are ahing their posts taken down. Facebook for example, using absurd excuses, have been caught repeatedly removing content that it bizzare objects to while other social media facilities are only quiet willing to share. when it comes to reporting on Gaza events for example, Facebook removes such posts and slanders them as “Spam“.

When the below was tried to be posted on Facebook, within minutes it was removed.

It was then replaced by Facebook, giving the user of the page, the following message.

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It now appears that this has been happeing regularly as Meta contiunues to censor certain news items. It should be noted that it does so while wishing to remain on favourable terms with government parties and in the case of Ireland, get special tax breaks that other companies in vast majority, cannot avail of. Irish Government TD’s (national elected) in the past, who apparently had ensured the tax breaks were allowed, have been gaining quite held classes in social media use – while opposition parties had been excluded. As for the overall global censorship, Meta’s content moderation policies and systems have continued to silence many voices expressing support of Palestine on Instagram and Facebook, in the wake of the hostilities between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups,

Human Rights Watch stated in a 51-page report entitled “Meta’s Broken Promises: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content on Instagram and Facebook,” that they documented a pattern of undue removal and suppression of protected speech including peaceful expression in support of Palestine and public debate about Palestinian human rights. Human Rights Watch found that their censore stemed from flawed Meta policies and their inconsistent and erroneous implementation, overreliance on automated tools to moderate content, and undue government influence over content removals.

LINK TO REPORT – CLICK HERE

Meta’s censorship of content in support of Palestine adds insult to injury at a time of unspeakable atrocities and repression already stifling Palestinians’ expression,” said Deborah Brown, acting associate technology and human rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Social media is an essential platform for people to bear witness and speak out against abuses while Meta’s censorship is furthering the erasure of Palestinians’ suffering.”

Human Rights Watch reviewed 1,050 cases of online censorship from over 60 countries. Though they are not necessarily a representative analysis of censorship, the cases are consistent with years of reporting and advocacy by Palestinian, regional, and international human rights organizations detailing Meta’s censorship of content supporting Palestinians.

Human Rights Watch identified six key patterns of censorship, each recurring in at least 100 instances: content removals, suspension or deletion of accounts, inability to engage with content, inability to follow or tag accounts, restrictions on the use of features such as Instagram/Facebook Live, and “shadow banning,a term denoting a significant decrease in the visibility of an individual’s posts, stories, or account without notification. In over 300 cases, users were unable to appeal content or account removal because the appeal mechanism malfunctioned, leaving them with no effective access to a remedy.

In a 2021 report, Human Rights Watch documented Facebook’s censorship of the discussion of rights issues pertaining to Israel and Palestine and warned that Meta was “silencing many people arbitrarily and without explanation.

An independent investigation conducted by Business for Social Responsibility and commissioned by Meta found that the company’s content moderation in 2021 “appear[s] to have had an adverse human rights impact on the rights of Palestinian users,” adversely affecting “the ability of Palestinians to share information and insights about their experiences as they occurred.”

In 2022, in response to the investigation’s recommendations as well as guidance by Meta’s Oversight Board, Meta made a commitment to make a series of changes to its policies and their enforcement in content moderation. Almost two years later, though, Meta has still not carried out its commitments, and the company has failed to meet its human rights responsibilities, Human Rights Watch found.