Facebook has been accused of severely restricting the ability of Palestinian news outlets to reach their audiences during the Israel–Gaza war. BBC analysis of Facebook data revealed a sharp decline in audience numbers for newsrooms in the Palestinian territories, including Gaza and the West Bank, since October 2023.
This decline in engagement is surprising, given that social media has become an important source of updates for those wanting to hear more voices from inside Gaza. The Facebook pages of news outlets such as Palestine TV, Wafa News Agency and Palestinian Al-Watan News have been important in providing updates to millions of followers around the world.
Since the war began, outside journalists have been allowed to enter Gaza along with Israeli forces.
Although during wars, audience engagement is expected to increase, data analysis showed that engagement for Palestinian-based news organizations declined by 77%, while engagement for Israeli news organizations increased by 37% during the same period. Has been seen.
Facebook owner Meta has denied intentionally suppressing particular voices and said any such implication is “categorically false”.
Palestine TV has 5.8 million followers on Facebook and the number of views on posts by journalists working there has dropped by 60%.
“Conversations were completely restricted and our posts stopped reaching people,” says the channel’s journalist Tariq Ziyad.
Shadow-banning is when a social media platform bans a user’s content without notifying the user, and Palestinian journalists fear that the same has happened to their online content.
The BBC ran data analysis on 20 Israeli news channels such as Yediot Aharonot, Israel Hayom and Channel 13, which also posted war-related content but saw their audience participation increase by 37%.
However, leaked documents and internal messages suggest that Instagram, another platform owned by Meta, has increased controls on Palestinian user comments after October 2023. The change was made to respond to “an increase in hateful content” coming from the Palestinian territories. To Meta.
The impact of these policies on individual Palestinian users is a matter of concern. Five former and current Meta employees spoke to the BBC about the effects of these policies, with one person sharing leaked internal documents about changes to Instagram’s algorithm.
Control over commenting on Instagram posts by Palestinians has been tightened, according to the documents. “Within a week of the Hamas attack, the code was essentially changed, making it more offensive toward the Palestinian people,” he said.
In response to these findings, Meta reported that it had made no secret of its “temporary product and policy measures” taken in October 2023. The company said it faced a challenge in balancing the right to freedom of expression with the fact that Hamas is designated as a US-sanctioned and dangerous organization under META’s own policies.
