According to The Guardian, the bug, first reported by 404media, affected users who wrote the word “Palestinian” in English, the Palestinian flag emoji and “alhamdulillah” in Arabic on their profiles.
According to the report, this phrase was automatically translated into English as “Praise be to god, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom”.
META APOLOGIZED
While there was reaction from users, Instagram solved the problem. A spokesperson for Meta told Guardian Australia the issue was fixed earlier this week.
“We have fixed an issue that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations on some of our products. We sincerely apologize for this,” the spokesperson said.
SHADOW BANNING AND CENSORY CLAIMS
Since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began, Meta has been accused of censoring posts supporting Palestine on its platforms, and it has been alleged that Meta has shadow-banned or made accounts less likely to appear in support of Palestine.
On the other hand, the company stated that there was an error that meant Reels and posts that were reshared this week did not appear in people’s Instagram stories, which caused the reach to decrease significantly and that this was not limited to posts about Israel and Gaza.
