Meta admits that it has made mistakes, but considers the evidence presented by the organization to be insufficient.
The social media channels Facebook and Instagram have systematically removed pro-Palestinian content from their platforms around the world, states the human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW). in its report published in December.
The organization went through more than a thousand publications, the visibility of which, according to social media users, was unclear.
Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, had removed some of the publications completely and limited the visibility of some. It had also removed accounts that shared pro-Palestinian content or restricted their users’ ability to comment on others’ posts.
According to Human Rights Watch, all of the deleted posts were about peaceful support for the Palestinians, and there was no apparent reason for their removal. They had been published in a total of 60 different countries, mostly in English.
The human rights organization accuses Meta of inconsistent moderation in connection with the Gaza war. According to it, content supporting the Palestinians has been erroneously removed, among other things, because Meta relies too much on automatic moderation and translation tools.
The organization also points out that Meta seems to “clearly respect” the requests of the governments of Israel and other countries to remove the posts.
Meta denies the allegations
Meta newspaper commented on the report’s claims For The Guardian at the end of December. According to it, allegations of systematic and deliberate silencing of the voices of Palestinians or their supporters are not true.
Somejätti admits that he makes mistakes. According to it, a thousand examples are not enough to prove censorship in the flood of messages related to the war in Gaza.
– Systematic censorship sounds good in the title, but that does not mean that the claim is true, Meta’s statement stated.
Some of the human rights activists has accused Metaa about limiting the visibility and censorship of pro-Palestinian messages since the early days of the Gaza war. Meta admitted in October that it had limited the visibility of some posts. According to Meta, it was an accident.