The Glimpse of Truth Behind Meta’s Censorship on Palestine
In the documentary by AL JAZEERA (AJ+), which has a shed light on Palestine Human Rights Watch on Meta’s current and former employees detailed allegations of mishandling pro-Palestinian content and retaliation against staff who raised concerns, showing a different face of how censorship might be shaping the narrative around pro-Palestinian viewpoints.
“Meta is the modern-day time square,” said Cyma Akhtar, who was fired last year, uncovering Meta’s immense power to control content on its socials.
She personally experienced censorship after October 7th, when a post of her eating watermelon cupcakes was removed. Meta informed Akhtar that she couldn’t share the post watermelon cupcakes were seen symbolizing Palestine. Human Rights Watch censorship about Palestine was nowhere to be found.
It is worth nothing that Cyma received the message from the platform after posting news articles about public concerns regarding the censorship of Palestine on Facebook and Instagram.
Those posts were deleted.
“I couldn’t sleep while I was working there. It was just sleepless nights where I felt the weight and burden of what Meta was doing on our platforms,” she said. “So, in December, I helped write a letter addressed to Meta leadership.”
A letter signed by 450 employees in just one day called on Meta’s leadership to address employees’ concerns, including allegations of censorship and an unsafe environment for Palestinian employees. There wasn’t any Human Rights Watch Palestine report regarding this particular incident.
https://x.com/_Assaf_MD/status/1765049248737882294
Meta responded to Cyma Akhtar’s advocacy by simply abruptly shutting down her system access and placing her under a two-month investigation, but Human Rights Watch Meta and Palestine had no say. During that time, Meta removed the letter, even accessing employees’ cache cams to delete copies, while failing to address the vocalized concerns.
Though Cyma was eventually cleared to return to work, she continued her advocacy on Palestine. In June, she was fired after Meta discovered she had made a copy of another internal document related to bias and discrimination within the tech giant and Israel Palestine Human Rights Watch.
Another Day Another Witness
Human Rights Watch Israel and Palestine released a report in December 2023, accusing Meta of systematic and global censorship of Palestine-related content.
“Many public users have accused Meta of restricting pro-Palestine content, from shadow bans to blocked accounts. These weren’t just accusations from the outside but were echoed by a number of employees within Meta. Shadow bans and censorship were highly pronounced inside Meta. I just want to emphasize that this is not just something users experience; it’s something employees experience too,” Dena Takruri stated.
Dina also shared examples from a former software engineer at Meta, a Palestinian American, given the name “Omar” to protect his identity and future job prospects. Omar explained that his role, starting in October 2023, involved assessing the quality of integrity filters concerning Israel, Gaza, and Ukraine. In December 2023, as the crisis escalated, he noticed severe issues affecting Palestinian users whose accounts were being suppressed, censored, or limited from appearing in recommendations.
According to Takruri, employees at Meta were getting messages from users saying, “My posts are getting taken down, my reach is limited, I feel shadowbanned.”
Takrouri noted that this issue has been documented by Palestine Human Rights Watch and digital rights organizations.
Omar stumbled upon the account of a prominent young photographer and journalist from Gaza with over 17 million followers. Many of his posts, depicting the devastation in Gaza, had been marked as containing “sexual activity or nudity,” flagged internally as pornographic. These posts included images of destroyed buildings and, in some cases, injured or deceased children.
Another Meta Problem to Be Swept Under the Rug
Recent actions by Meta have ignited serious questions about transparency and accountability, and the social godfather is handling content moderation and censorship.
The giant’s internal staff and human rights organizations continue to report systematic problems with censored pro-Palestinian content, especially those from Palestinian journalists and activists.
Beyond content moderation, criticisms and threats to freedom of speech, Meta Platforms Inc. is scrutinized over its data collection and user privacy, particularly with younger users. Privacy groups have strongly criticized Meta for how it collects and handles user data, arguing that platforms like Instagram and Facebook fail to adequately protect children.
Despite empty promises of transparency, Meta censorship is just another model out of many Big Tech companies that have yet to publicly and openly address these privacy issues, leaving users in the dark about why certain content is removed or why it doesn’t align with each platform’s algorithm, be it Human Rights Watch Meta censorship Meta or Google in how it is handling all pro-Palestine news and Palestine Human Rights Watch.
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