HRW: Meta Adds 'Insult to Injury' by Censoring Pro-Palestinian Voices

Meta has been systematically suppressing pro-Palestinian content posted on Facebook and Instagram, Human Rights Watch found in a report released late on Wednesday.

Since Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel and the launch of Israel's subsequent assault on Gaza, HRW has reviewed 1,050 cases of censorship, 1,049 of which involved peaceful posts supporting Palestine. Meta removed comments reading "Free Palestine" and "Stop the Genocide," hid or removed the Palestinian flag emoji from comment sections, and suspended or removed prominent Palestinian accounts.

"Meta's censorship of content in support of Palestine adds insult to injury at a time of unspeakable atrocities and repression already stifling Palestinians' expression," Deborah Brown, HRW's acting associate technology and human rights director, said in a statement. "Social media is an essential platform for people to bear witness and speak out against abuses while Meta's censorship is furthering the erasure of Palestinians' suffering."

Censorship of voices in support of Palestine is not a new problem for Meta, but HRW wrote that "this appears to be the biggest wave of suppression of content about Palestine to date." HRW looked at content posted between October and November of 2023 in more than 60 countries. It comes as the Israeli attack has killed around 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza and caused a humanitarian crisis by restricting aid to the strip's 2.2 million people, galvanizing an international movement calling for a cease-fire.

"What impressed us is that it is global," Brown toldEl País. "These are not activists who usually handle the issue of Palestine. They are ordinary citizens, people concerned with what is happening, who are reacting to the news and experiencing censorship for the first time."

HRW found that Meta's censorship took six major forms:

1. Outright removing content;
2. Suspending or permanently disabling accounts;
3. Restricting someone's ability to respond to other content for 24 hours to three months;
4. Limiting someone's ability to tag or follow other accounts;
5. Limiting someone's ability to use site features like Instagram or Facebook Live; and
6. Shadow banning, or reducing the visibility of a user's content without informing them.

HRW noted each of these types of censorship at least 100 times. For example, it found hundreds of cases in which comments including phrases like "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," "Free Palestine," "Cease-fire now," and "Stop the genocide" were removed. The report also documented the removal of posts merely mentioning Hamas and the flagging of criticisms of the Israeli government as dangerous or hate speech. Several prominent Palestinian accounts were suspended temporarily or removed permanently, including those of Palestinian journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, Let's Talk Palestine, Quds News Network, and Mondoweiss correspondent Leila Warah.

HRW also documented more than 300 cases in which users were not able to appeal any restrictions on their account.

The censorship occurred because of four main systemic reasons, HRW said. First, Meta's Dangerous Organizations and Individuals (DOI) policy bans people or groups "that proclaim a violent mission or are engaged in violence." This includes bans on posts that "praise" or "support" a list of organizations broadly pulled from the U.S. government's list of designated terrorist groups, which includes groups like Hamas or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine that have both armed and unarmed components.

"The ways in which Meta enforces this policy effectively bans many posts that endorse major Palestinian political movements and quells the discussion around Israel and Palestine," HRW said.

"Instead of tired apologies and empty promises, Meta should demonstrate that it is serious about addressing Palestine-related censorship once and for all by taking concrete steps toward transparency and remediation."

Meta also has not consistently applied its exception to certain rules, such as those against sharing graphic content, if the content is newsworthy. In many cases, it removed images of Palestinian suffering that had news value. Censorship also occurred because Meta seemed to pull posts at the request of governments and depended on automated tools to moderate content, HRW said.

The group acknowledged that many posts on Meta platforms do support Palestine or criticize Israeli policies without facing censorship.

"This does not, however, excuse its undue restrictions on peaceful content in support of Palestine and Palestinians, which is contrary to the universal rights to freedom of expression and access to information," the report authors wrote.

Meta has been criticized by HRW and other human rights and digital rights groups for censoring pro-Palestinian content in the past. In 2021, the Israeli government planned to take over the homes of Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem. HRW found that Instagram and Facebook censored posts responding to the incident and the subsequent protests.

Meta then commissioned a report by the Business for Social Responsibility that concluded that "Meta's actions in May 2021 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, and therefore on the ability of Palestinians to share information and insights about their experiences as they occurred."

Meta promised to make a series of changes in response to the reports, but its actions following October 7 show that it has not followed through.

"Instead of tired apologies and empty promises, Meta should demonstrate that it is serious about addressing Palestine-related censorship once and for all by taking concrete steps toward transparency and remediation," Brown said

HRW sent a letter to Meta on November 15 detailing the findings of its most recent report. In response, Meta wrote back on December 6 that it had taken "crisis response measures" after the October 7 attacks that were "guided by core human rights principles," namely balancing the rights to life, security, and non-discrimination and the dignity of the victim with the right to expression.

"Obviously, in exceptional and fast-moving situations like this, our response can never be perfect, lines are difficult to draw, and people or systems can and will make mistakes," Meta wrote.

HRW called on Meta to reform its DOI policy, review how its "newsworthy allowance" policy is applied, be transparent about how it responds to government requests and moderates by algorithm, study how the recommendations algorithm it introduced after October 7 impacts human rights, and work with civil society to set goals for reducing its censorship of content related to Palestine.

"Meta should permit protected expression, including about human rights abuses and political movements, on its platforms," the report authors said.