How Social Media Censorship of Palestine Works

Shereen discusses the censoring of Palestine-related content that is increasingly happening both online and offline.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
All Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to it could happen here. This is Sharine,
and today we are talking about you guessed it, Palestine.
I'm also gonna keep talking about Palestine because there has
been genocide happening for the past five months and also
seventy six years, and I refuse to let it be
forgotten about. But I refused to let it be something
that we used to talk about, because it's happening right

(00:26):
now and we need to talk about it. So here
I am talking about it. And while being a public
supporter of Palestine has never been popular in the United States,
since October, we've seen a significant increase in the silencing
of Palestinian and pro Palestinian voices. And this is happening
both online and offline. But let's first start with the

(00:47):
digital sphere, where the censorship of Palestinian voices and pro
Palestinian content can have really dangerous consequences, especially since the
vast majority of US consume our news via social media
these days. Meta, for example, has a long history of
systematically censoring Palestine related content. While the company has stated

(01:08):
that it's quote never their intention to suppress a particular
community or point of view, access Now conducted a report
where their documentation points to the opposite conclusion. The information
in this episode, when it comes to Meta, in particular,
will be from the findings of access Now in their report,
because I don't think the report got the attention it
deserved when it was published on February nineteenth. Denying the

(01:31):
public from both expressing and seeing content supporting Palestine is
a very dangerous game that only further bolsters Israeli propaganda
as well as silences any criticism against the settler colony
of Israel. This is not okay and it should concern
you because you have the right to know the truth.
This pattern of censorship is no glitch. Soon after Israel

(01:54):
began bombarding Gaza and blatantly committing genocide last October, Palestinians
of people sharing pro Palestinian messages began to report that
their content was being censored and suppressed on social media platforms,
including on Facebook and Instagram. The platforms restricted and sometimes
even suspended the accounts of Palestinian journalists and activists both

(02:15):
inside and outside of Gaza, and arbitrarily deleted a considerable
amount of content, including documentation of atrocities and human rights abuses.
Committed by Israel against the Palestinian people. Examples of this
online censorship show that it is rampant, systematic, and global.
For instance, Human Rights Watch has documented one thousand and

(02:36):
fifty cases of peaceful content expressing support for Palestine originating
for more than sixty countries around the world, being removed
between October and November twenty twenty three. Meanwhile, the Palestinian
Observatory for Digital Rights Violations has documented around one thousand
and forty three instances of censorship between October seventh of

(02:57):
twenty twenty three and February ninth of this year, including
on Facebook and Instagram, from content removals to very blatant restrictions.
The following examples illustrate the main patterns of censorship on
metas platforms documented since October seventh, twenty twenty three. Our
first example is Facebook's removal of content that was documenting

(03:18):
the explosion at at Heity Arab Hospital. It removed content
shared by people who were on the ground during the
massacre and during the bombing. The automatic deletion of bystander
content with evidentiary value, especially during times of war, not
only violates people's ability to express themselves, and freely access information.
It also hinders current and future investigations into alliged war

(03:42):
crimes at atrocities perpetrated in Gaza by Israel funded by
the United States. There have also been suspensions of prominent
Palestinian and Palestine related accounts. Meta has banned and suspended
scores of accounts that posted content about Palestine. For instance,
October Time twenty twenty three, Mandawis reported that Instagram had

(04:03):
twice suspended the account of les La Wara, its West
Bank video correspondent. It was only after Manda Weiss publicized
the suspension that the platform quickly reinstated her account. Metta
also suspended the account of Gaza journalists and photographer Motaz Azza,
who gained more than eighteen point six million followers for

(04:24):
reporting on the genocide in Gaza. This forced him to
create a new backup account under at Mota Gaza, which
acquired more than one million followers within twenty four hours.
Meta later did reinstate Motaz's original account, but several of
Aiz's posts showing dead or injured Palestinians were flagged by

(04:45):
Instagram for possibly violating its policy on adult nudity and
sexual activity. Under its DOI policy, which stands for Dangerous
Organizations and Individuals. Meta also permanently banned the Arabic and
English language Facebook page of Klutz News Network, the largest
and entirely volunteer run Palestinian news outlet, which has over

(05:06):
ten million followers on Facebook. Other news outlets that Meta
has temporarily suspended or banned include Aijal Radio Network, Breakthrough
News twenty four FM, and Palestinian Refugees Portal. In addition,
Palestinian journalists Fatten, Edwin Saldehel Jafarawi, and Ahmed chiheb Alden

(05:28):
have all experienced and continue to experience content takedowns and
account restrictions on Instagram and Facebook. There have also been
numerous examples of restrictions on pro Palestinian users and content.
Here are some examples. Meta blocked Jerusalem based activist sad
Nan Bek from live streaming on Instagram. It restricted Jewish

(05:49):
American artists and author Malli Krabapple's Instagram account, and there
have also been documented cases of Meta hiding Instagram comments
that contain the Palestinian flag emoji for being quote potentially offensive.
Many people have reported being barred from commenting on Instagram.
Posts containing Palestine related content. One user said that a

(06:10):
comment was blocked for over twenty four hours without explanation.
People have also reported being unable to repost or reshare
content related to Palestine in their Instagram stories. In addition
to the usual screening that Meta imposes on graphic or
violent content, Meta imposed a quote sensitive content warning before

(06:31):
users could reshare Palestine related posts via their Instagram stories.
In some instances, attempts to reshare such content generated a
blank page and a message stating that quote something went wrong.
Following the Arab Hospital massacre, people reported being unable to
reshare a video report that was criticizing Western media coverage

(06:53):
of the bombing, either via their direct messages or Instagram stories.
This video report was conducted by a Lebanese media outlet
called Megaphone. Metta has also repeatedly discouraged users from following
or sharing content from popular Palestinian accounts that we're sharing
updates on Gaza in the form of prompts saying quote

(07:14):
are you sure you want to follow or mention this account,
and warnings that certain accounts have quote repeatedly posted false
information or violated metas community guidelines and perhaps the most
disturbing incident and one that I will never forget, and
I hope you don't either. And if you haven't heard
about this, buckle up. Instagram repeatedly auto translated the word

(07:36):
Palestinian or instances of the Palestinian flag use alongside the
Arabic phrase at hamdula la, which means praise be to
God on people's bios. But hamda la lah, by the way,
is an extremely innocent phrase that is used by all people.
Let's speak Arabic essentially, and it's said all the time.
It's a very peaceful, calming thing to say at haamdla lah,

(07:59):
thank you God. But guess what they translated this into.
Instagram translated the word Palestinian, the use of the Palestine
flag along with handrina in people's bios into Palestinian terrorists
are fighting for their freedom. Palestinian terrorists are fighting for
their freedom? Are you fucking kidding me? When a TikTok

(08:22):
user uncovered this disturbing pattern, Meta apologized and fixed the issue,
and we all moved on. One of the most insidious
ways that Palestinian and pro Palestinian voices are being censored
and suppressed on Meta's platforms. Is via the restriction of
certain accounts reach invisibility without any explanation or notification aka

(08:45):
shadow banning. For example, following the Lebanese media outlet megaphones
coverage of the air hospital attack, its Instagram account at
megaphone News was hidden from search results. Evidence also suggests
that on October eighth, twenty twenty three, Meta hid Instagram
content that included the hashtag at uxa flood from view.

(09:07):
Meta's censorship of Palestinine voices and Palestinian related content as
far from new. In recent years, however, it has become
increasingly pronounced, with a well documented pattern of systematic censorship,
algorithmic bias, and discriminatory content moderation emerging. During the twenty
twenty one Schechtracht protests, social media content expressing support for

(09:31):
Palestinian rights was deleted, removed, and shadow band while users
who were sharing such content were suspended or prevented from
commenting or live streaming, and pro Palestinian hashtags were suppressed.
These were all serious problems that Meta brushed off as
quote a technical issue. Let's take a little breather, and

(09:52):
when we come back, we'll talk about silencing that is
outside of the digital world, so brb okay, We're back.
In addition to digital silencing, we have seen cases of

(10:14):
silencing occurring offline, as Americans are being fired or facing
threats for speaking out in support of Palestine. An open
letter published in art Forum on October nineteenth declared we
support Palestinian liberation and call for an end to the
killing and harming of all civilians. It was signed by
thousands of artists, scholars, and cultural workers, including the Art

(10:38):
World magazine's editor David Velasco. A week later, Velasco was
fired from the publication that he had worked at for
eighteen years, reportedly after pushback from Martin Eisenberg, a major
arts patron, and Ben Batham Beyond air Wow. At least
four Art Forum editors have resigned in protest against Svelasko's firing,

(11:01):
and many many more people have lost their jobs. Just
a few quick examples, a Philadelphia sports writer was fired
after tweeting quote solidarity with Palestine and criticism of a
seventy six ers post that offered support to Israel after
Hamas's attack. In another high profile incident, a University of
California Berkeley professor was sacked as editor in chief of

(11:25):
the scientific journal eLife after he retweeted an onion article
that he said, quote calls out indifference to the lives
of Palestinian civilians. A spokesperson for Palestine Legal, a civil
rights group, says it has responded to more than two
hundred and sixty incidents of suppression against Palestinian rights activists

(11:45):
over two weeks of October, more than it did in
all of twenty twenty two. The Council on American Islamic
Relations also CARE or CR, which is a civil rights nonprofit,
says it received seven hundred and seventy four complaints between
October seventh and October twenty fourth, which was the largest
wave of complaints that it's handled since Donald Trump announced

(12:08):
his Muslim ban in twenty fifteen. This wave has targeted
professional activists as well as ordinary people who have spoken
in defense of Palestinians. It has reportedly also escalated into
death threats, as well as assaults and visits from the
FBI to Muslim individuals and mosques. In surprise to absolutely
no one in the United States, the highest levels of

(12:31):
power have long supported voices backing Israel and its military.
In the words of Justin Sadowski, an attorney at CARE.
The swift blowback against pro Palestinian voices builds on decades
of organized efforts to quote tar Palestinian rights speech as
pro terrorist or anti Semitic. The late civil rights attorney

(12:52):
Michael Ratner called this the quote Palestine exception to free speech.
In twenty fifteen, CCF and Palestine Legal published a report
on the tactics used by pro Israel lobbying groups, school administrators,
and public officials to shut down Palestinian rights activists. They
included false accusations of anti Semitism or support for terrorism,

(13:16):
as well as legal threats and criminal investigations, and they
often succeeded in intimidating or deterring Palestinian solidarity activists from
speaking out. And again, this pattern of silencing is not new.
The prominent Palestinian American scholar Rashid Khalidi recalls feeling overwhelmingly
outnumbered at Columbia University in two thousand and three when

(13:39):
pro Israel advocates protested against him and other faculty, as
well as students who spoke out against Israel amid intense
fighting in Gaza and the West Bank news crews hounded
him on campus, and pro Israel students even made a
documentary about the controversy. Khalidi says, I think the narrative
was pretty firmly in the hands of people who supported Israel.

(14:02):
But he continued, there's a generational change taking place with
young people having an entirely different set of views. They
consume different media, and I think they're more educated, more worldly,
and better informed than their elders. The recent laws against
the boycotting of Israel, in particular, which thirty six states

(14:23):
have enacted, directly stifle political advocacy by making people choose
between their livelihoods and their First Amendment rights. Last year,
the Jewish American scholar Nathan Thrahl announced that he had
been disinvited from speaking at the University of Arkansas for
refusing to sign an anti boycott pledge that was required

(14:43):
of public contractors by state law. Maybe after all this,
you're asking yourself, so what.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Do we do now?

Speaker 2 (14:52):
We do exactly what they don't want us to do,
exactly what they're afraid of us doing, exactly what they're
trying to deter us from doing. Continue talking about Palestine
and sharing news and images and information that exposes Israel's
crime of genocide against the Palestinian people. The same way
people say to vote with your dollar when it comes

(15:13):
to boycotting certain brands and choosing where your money goes.
You can decide how you want to use your social
media platforms, What do you want to do with your
digital presence, what do you stand for? Personally? I think
the days of casually and incessantly posting about your life
are behind us, or at least we're headed in that direction.

(15:34):
We're utilizing social media in a different way now. Seeing
how gen Z has utilized TikTok to share information is
a great example of that. I don't think celebrity culture, unfortunately,
will ever completely go away on social media, but I
do think we are demanding more about our celebrities now,
and I think, especially as we're seeing quote unquote trusted

(15:56):
news sources pedal disinformation and propaganda and an e responsible
and appalling way to put it very lightly, we are
relying on each other to share real information, and in
this case, our resources are coming from the people who
are directly experiencing the horrors of genocide for the past
five months and seventy six years, and those voices must

(16:18):
be amplified. There are a lot of solid arguments to
be made against social media as a whole when it
comes to whether or not it benefits humanity. But I
am seeing something shift now where we are able to
utilize this tool for our betterment. If it wasn't for
social media, the movement for Palestinian liberation would not be
where it is today. People who were previously uninformed would

(16:41):
never have seen the reality of the situation were it
not for our ability to learn from each other outside
of the limitations of mainstream news. We are learning to
trust the establishment less and trust each other more. And
I think we're able to use social media in this way.
It's actually a net positive for us. It doesn't have

(17:01):
to be empty and mind theming in a way to
control us or get us to spend our money to
keep the capitalism machine in good working order. We can
decide how we utilize our digital presence and the good
that can come from it. And to be united in
this way is extremely powerful and it can ignite real change,
and at the very least, it can be our way

(17:22):
of spiting the powers that be and refusing to be sheep.
Existing in an age of mass surveillance is frankly very terrifying.
But seeing the lengths that companies like Meta will not
only go to to surveill us, but to monitor what
we consume, it's extremely revealing of how weak their power
actually is. It's up to us to take back that power,

(17:46):
especially now as we are witnessing a genocide happen in
real time on our silly little devices for the past
five months, and having people become aware of the slower
genocide and ethnic cleansing that has taken place for seventy
six years. So keep talking about Palestine, both in person
with your peers and family and online. I can't guarantee

(18:08):
that you won't face pushback or repercussions, because as we know,
that is a real possibility, but the community of people
that you gain from learning of and speaking the truth
far outweighs any individual fear, and I would rather stand
for something than cower by myself or be controlled by fear.
We do have the ability to change things. I have

(18:31):
to believe that something else is possible, but it starts
with taking the blinders off and making a choice about
how you want to utilize the tools at your disposal,
rather than be utilized yourself and that my Friends is
our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening
and Repalestine.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
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