ZuckerFace

And His MetaFaceVerse 🏰

Najwan Abdul Wahab

Apr 01, 2024

I. Introduction

Censorship, piqued your interest?

Previously chronicled experiences on Instagram ⬇️

We Have a Censorship Problem

Najwan Abdul Wahab

Mar 16

Read full story

We STILL Have a Censorship Problem

Najwan Abdul Wahab

Mar 19

Read full story

Today’s article aims to examine Meta’s systemic online censorship of 🇵🇸 via their content moderation policies & practices. Here goes…

II. Business For Social Responsibility (BSR)

In September 2021, Meta commissioned BSR to review the human rights impacts of the company’s policies and activities during the May 2021 crisis in Israel and Palestine.

BSR:

‘Meta commissioned Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) to carry out an independent Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) exercise on Israel and Palestine for the period of May 2021. This work was scoped as rapid human rights due diligence rather than a full Human Rights Impact Assessment in order to enable swift project launch and implementation. […] This HRDD was conducted by BSR in 2021 and 2022 in line with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.’

The independent audit inferred from Meta’s content moderation in 2021 that:

‘Based on the data reviewed, examination of individual cases and related materials, and external stakeholder engagement, 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. This was reflected in conversations with affected stakeholders, many of whom shared with BSR their view that Meta appears to be another powerful entity repressing their voice that they are helpless to change.’

One VERY interesting observation…

‘Palestinians are more likely to violate Meta’s DOI policy because of the presence of Hamas as a governing entity in Gaza and political candidates affiliated with designated organizations. DOI violations also come with particularly steep penalties, which means Palestinians are more likely to face steeper consequences for both correct and incorrect enforcement of policy. In contrast to Israelis and others, Palestinians are prevented from sharing types of political content because the Meta DOI policy has no exception for the praise of designated entities in their governing capacity.’

➡️ READ BSR’s Full Report (English)

III. Human Rights Watch (HRW)

The HRW’s report from December 2023, “Meta’s Broken Promises: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content on Instagram and Facebook,” details Meta’s suppressive practices of voices in aid of Palestine on Instagram and Facebook.

‘Human Rights Watch identified six key patterns of censorship, each recurring in at least 100 instances: content removals, suspension or deletion of accounts, inability to engage with content, inability to follow or tag accounts, restrictions on the use of features such as Instagram/Facebook Live, and “shadow banning,” a term denoting a significant decrease in the visibility of an individual’s posts, stories, or account without notification.’

➡️ READ HRW’s Full Report (English)

IV. Meta’s Policies

Along with Meta’s documented Pro-Palestinian voices suppression through above cited practices, company exhibits:

➊ Lack of Transparency Around Government Requests

Meta responds to government requests for data in accordance with applicable law and our terms of service.

Below infographic & stats indicate the number of requests received by Meta, published as a 6-month increment (Latest Published Date Range: Jan-Jun 2023)

Left to Right:

All Global Requests | Requests from Palestine | Requests from Israel

And

➋ Abuse of Dangerous Organizations and Individuals (DOI) Policy

Under the section titled [Policy Rationale]:

‘In an effort to prevent and disrupt real-world harm, we do not allow organizations or individuals that proclaim a violent mission or are engaged in violence to have a presence on our platforms. We assess these entities based on their behavior both online and offline, most significantly, their ties to violence. Under this policy, we designate individuals, organizations, and networks of people. These designations are divided into two tiers that indicate the level of content enforcement, with Tier 1 resulting in the most extensive enforcement because we believe these entities have the most direct ties to offline harm.
Tier 1 focuses on entities that engage in serious offline harms - including organizing or advocating for violence against civilians, repeatedly dehumanizing or advocating for harm against people based on protected characteristics, or engaging in systematic criminal operations. Tier 1 includes hate organizations; criminal organizations, including those designated by the United States government as Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficking Kingpins (SDNTKs); and terrorist organizations, including entities and individuals designated by the United States government as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) or Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs). We remove Glorification, Support, and Representation of Tier 1 entities, their leaders, founders or prominent members, as well as unclear references to them.’

V. U.S. Department of State

Specifically…

‘The Bureau of Counterterrorism's mission is to promote U.S. national security by taking a leading role in developing coordinated strategies and approaches to defeat terrorism abroad and securing the counterterrorism cooperation of international partners.’

Two ways the organization attempts to accomplish above-stated mission statement:

➊ Designating terrorist organizations | Terrorist Designations & State Sponsors of Terrorism ⬇️

‘Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) are foreign organizations that are designated by the Secretary of State in accordance with section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as amended.’

And

➋ Annual reporting titled ‘Country Reports on Terrorism’ (in compliance with Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f (the “Act”)) | Country Reports

Report: Terrorism 2022: Israel, West Bank, and Gaza ⬇️

‘Israel remained a committed counterterrorism (CT) partner of the United States and closely coordinated on a wide range of CT initiatives. During an interagency CT dialogue in December, Israel and the United States shared information on regional threats and discussed ways to apply new sanctions on those that threaten the national security of both countries.’

Reference the flurry of FTO designations dated October 8 1997 …

Meta's wielding of their DOI policy whilst tethered to U.S.’s sanctioned ‘terrorist organizations’ rosters, chokes indiscriminately the flow of authentic, legitimate dialogue deemed permissible per the Palestinian issue.

VI. Some Recent News

Sharing couple headlines from the past week on the topic of Meta’s censorship

Article ➊: ‘The change has caught even the most online off guard, with many users criticizing Meta for limiting political content in a year when the U.S. and several other countries will be holding pivotal elections — and for doing so with relatively little warning.’

Article ➋: ‘The oversight board of Meta, the social media giant which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has ruled that a ban on the use of the word “shaheed” – “martyr” in Arabic – should be lifted.’