The human rights-focused advocacy group documented more than 1,050 takedowns and suppression of content posted by Palestinians and supporters on Meta platforms between October and November, including 1,049 posts involving peaceful content in support of Palestinians and one in support of Israel.
“Human Rights Watch found that the censorship of content related to Palestine on Instagram and Facebook is systemic and global,” the report reads. “Meta’s inconsistent enforcement of its own policies led to the erroneous removal of content about Palestine.”
“While this appears to be the biggest wave of suppression of content about Palestine to date, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has a well-documented record of over-broad crackdowns on content related to Palestine,” it added.
Following an earlier outbreak of violence in May 2021, Meta faced similar accusations of unfair treatment of Palestinians on its platforms — prompting the tech giant to commission an independent due diligence report.
The 2021 report found that Meta’s actions during the period of unrest “appear to have had an adverse human rights impact on the rights of Palestinian users to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, political participation, and non-discrimination.”
While the tech giant made adjustments to its content moderation policies in response to the due diligence report, it has faced renewed criticism from Palestinian advocacy groups for its latest actions in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
The Hill has reached out to Meta for comment.
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com.
