THE international media had “no intention” to hear Palestinian voices at the outbreak of the most recent conflict in Gaza, according to an expert based in Israel.
Nadim Nashif, the director and co-founder of the Arab Center for Social Media Advancement (7amleh), warned that the policies of social media giants were also having the effect of suppressing Palestinian voices.
Speaking to the Sunday National from the city of Haifa on Israel’s northern coast, Nashif pointed to a 2022 report about how Meta – the parent company of sites such as Facebook and Instagram – had negatively impacted the fundamental human rights of Palestinian users during strikes on Gaza in May 2021.
Commissioned by Meta, the independent report found the firm’s actions had “had an adverse human rights impact … on the rights of Palestinian users to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, political participation, and non-discrimination”.
Nashif said the latest escalation in the conflict between Israel and Hamas had been Meta’s first real test since that report’s publication. He added: “They basically failed.
“We are watching several phenomena that lead us to a clear conclusion that this is again trying to tune down the Palestinian narrative.
“So, for example, they have been shadow banning and limiting the reach of many of the Palestinian activists. They restricted the Palestinian media outlets and one of them, they did cancel the page.
“They prevented the Arabic name of the current escalation/war. The hashtag of that name in Arabic is prevented while, for example, the hashtag of the name in Hebrew is still free, out there and usable.”
In a statement issued earlier in October, Meta said there was “no truth to the suggestion that we are deliberately suppressing voice”.
However, it added: “We can make errors and that is why we offer an appeals process for people to tell us when they think we have made the wrong decision, so we can look into it.”
Last week, Instagram account @eye.on.palestine – which had more than six million followers and was one of the leading accounts sharing experiences of life under the Israeli siege of Gaza – was locked by Meta, with the company citing concerns it may have been compromised.
It came after Meta was forced to apologise earlier in October after an auto-translation bug saw some Palestinian Instagram users have the word “terrorist” inserted into their profiles, something Nashif said was “quite extraordinary”.
Palestinian media outlet 24FM also had its Facebook account temporarily suspended, as did the Instagram account @letstalkpalestine.
Nashif said: “They say it's an error or a technical error or a glitch. The problem is that these technical errors happen always on the Palestinian side.
“We had this in May 2021. We're having this now. Clearly, there is a bias in the data sets and in the programming. This is not something that came out of nothing.
“In my opinion, it shows the deep bias that is happening in those systems.”
A recap of last week's Palestinian digital rights updates: 📌 Tainted Narratives: Tech Giants Harming Users in War Time 📌Social Media Platforms Under Fire: Are Pro-Palestinian Voices Being Silenced? 📍Full report: https://t.co/FvPGc3nzeA#DigitalRights = #HumanRights pic.twitter.com/3744qndat5
— 7amleh حملة (@7amleh) October 27, 2023
Nashif, who helped found 7amleh before taking over as director in 2016, said that the suppression of Palestinian voices by social media algorithms made it harder for international media to show both sides of the story – even now there is a growing desire for it.
“I think at the beginning there was kind of no intention to hear the Palestinian story or narrative, especially in the first week after Hamas’s assault on Israel,” he said.
“I think there was also some information that was circulated by the Israeli government in a way to overcome or to dominate the narrative that was happening.
“And I think in maybe the second or the third week, there was more and more interest from international journalists also to the other side.”
Asked how change could be brought about, Nashif said it was “important to write about it and to expose the company [Meta] and to do this to create enough pressure that they would make some changes”.
He went on: “At the end of the day, you're having, like ‘community standards’ and a lot of nice words, but you implement them only on one side, depending on your political interest.
“They have to be more equal and fair and more transparent, mainly because lots of things that are happening are not in front of the public eye.
“At the end of the day, what we want as a rights organisation is that everybody, including Israelis, Palestinians and others, would be safe on those platforms.
“There won't be incitement, we would be respecting freedom of expression, but they also would be safe. And this is not happening.”
Meta was approached for comment.
It said in a statement published in mid-October: “After the terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel last week, and Israel’s response in Gaza, our teams introduced a series of measures to address the spike in harmful and potentially harmful content spreading on our platforms.
“Our policies are designed to keep people safe on our apps while giving everyone a voice. We apply these policies equally around the world and there is no truth to the suggestion that we are deliberately suppressing voice.
“However, content containing praise for Hamas, which is designated by Meta as a Dangerous Organization, or violent and graphic content, for example, is not allowed on our platforms.
“We can make errors and that is why we offer an appeals process for people to tell us when they think we have made the wrong decision, so we can look into it.”
