META confirms what we all knew to be true

Facebook suspends account of Al Jazeera journalist covering the company’s censorship of Palestine

On Friday, Al Jazeera released the latest episode of its hit investigative show, "Tip of the Iceberg," hosted by star journalist Tamer Almisshal. The episode delved into the clear and obvious pro-Israel bias of Instagram and Facebook, two social media platforms owned by the parent company Meta. The Arabic episode of the show, titled "The Locked Space," conducted a thorough examination of the various ways in which Facebook's content moderation system and oversight board have led to the deletion and suspension of thousands of posts and accounts related to Palestinians since 2016.

Since 2021, AMP, along with JVP, Mpower Change, and 7amleh, has spearheaded an international campaign to pressure Meta to end its discriminatory practices against Palestinians and those who support Palestine on its platforms. 

The "Facebook, we need to talk" campaign has garnered thousands of signatures worldwide and led to protests at Facebook headquarters in cities around the globe. Facebook has responded to the campaign by initiating regular meetings with Palestinian groups in the US and civil society organizations in Palestine to discuss content moderation. It appeared to be on the path toward resolving the censorship of Palestinian speech on its platforms.

However, Aljazeera's program confirmed what we all knew to be true: Israel's infiltration of Meta through the hiring of former Israeli government officials on Meta's Oversight Board and the ongoing communication between Israel's Cyber Unit and the company have transformed Meta into an extension of Israel's global campaign against Palestinians.

Almisshal interviewed former Israeli intelligence operatives who openly discussed Israel's strategy for suppressing information about Palestine. They revealed that they worked directly with Meta executives to shape policy and develop algorithms designed to immediately detect and censor posts that the Israeli government deemed necessary to remove. In the words of the former SHABAK officer, Facebook complied with an astounding rate of more than 85% of Israel's requests and removed content based on information provided by the Israeli government.

Almisshal also interviewed a member of Facebook's Oversight Board, Julie Owono, whose responsibility is to ensure that Facebook complies with its stated principles. Owono admitted that posts in Arabic were a particular target of censorship due to what she absurdly alluded to as Facebook's internal lack of proficiency in the Arabic language.

Within 24 hours of the episode's release, Facebook suspended the personal account of the Al Jazeera journalist in an obvious act of retaliation against the journalist and Al Jazeera. Although Facebook did reinstate Almisshal's account later, this incident serves as an ominous sign that Meta is not genuinely trying to fulfill its promises to uphold its stated principles of defending human rights and its "commitment to free expression."

AMP will continue to pressure Meta until it stops its discriminatory practices against Palestinian content and voices. In 2022, we joined 70 other organizations in releasing a statement about BSR’s Human Rights Due Diligence Report on Arabic and Hebrew content on Meta’s platforms. The statement was followed by a robust international campaign calling on Meta executives to commit to implementing the recommendations seriously and within a clear and specific timeframe!

AMP will continue its efforts with friends and allies until we end the silencing and censoring of Palestinians on Meta’s platforms.