Meta has apologised for inserting the word ‘terrorist’ into the profile bios of some Palestinians users.
The issue was first noticed by TikTok user @ytkingkhan who noticed when he inserted Palestinian followed by the flag emoji and the Arabic phrase ‘Alhamdulillah,’ which means ‘Praise be to God,’ Instagram auto-translated it to "Praise be to God, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom.”
When he tested it again he found the translation still contained the term ‘terrorist.’
In a statement Meta said: "We fixed a problem that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations in some of our products.
"We sincerely apologise that this happened."
Mete has also been accused of shadow banning and censoring users posting content in support of Palestine on its platform by limiting the views the post received reducing its reach.
Nadim Nashif, founder and director of 7amleh, the Arab Center for Social Media Advancement, told the Guardian: “Unfortunately, shadow banning is just one of the many ways in which we have seen Palestinian content silenced and censored over the last week.”
“This has been a trend of Meta in times of crisis, and we saw a significant spike of Palestinians and allies reporting limited reach and errors with content they posted about the ongoing crisis in Palestine.”
In a blog post on Wednesday, Meta said it had introduced new measures "to address the spike in harmful and potentially harmful content spreading on our platforms".
It said there was "no truth to the suggestion that we are deliberately suppressing anyone's voice.”
Meta stressed that content containing support for Hamas or violent and graphic content is not allowed on its platform but admitted it "can make errors."
The company also said they fixed a bug this week that meant people’s re-shared reels and posts were not showing up, reducing its reach and said this was not limited to content about Gaza or Israel.
