How Facebook restricted information in Palestinian territories

BBC A man with a beard, wearing a baseball cap, holds a professional-standard camera. He is in profile and wearing a flak jacket with the word "Press" on it, and he appears to be standing on the upper level of a building on a sunny day. In the background is the blurred image of what appears to be a heavily bomb-hit city.BBC
Omar el Qataa is a photojournalist operating out of northern Gaza

Facebook has severely restricted the ability of Palestinian information outlets to reach an spectators during the Israel-Gaza war, according to BBC research.

In a comprehensive analysis of Facebook data, we found that newsrooms in the Palestinian territories – in Gaza and the West financial institution – had suffered a steep drop in spectators engagement since October 2023.

The BBC has also seen leaked documents showing that Instagram – another Meta-owned platform – increased its moderation of Palestinian user comments after October 2023.

Meta – the owner of Facebook – says that any implication that it deliberately suppressed particular voices is “unequivocally untrue”.

Since the beginning of the Israel-Gaza war, just a few outside reporters have been allowed to enter the Palestinian coastal territory of Gaza from the outside, and they were only able to do so escorted by the Israeli army.

Social media has filled the gap for those wanting to listen more voices from inside Gaza. Facebook pages for information outlets such as Palestine TV, Wafa information agency and Palestinian Al-Watan information – which operate out of the West financial institution territory – became a vital source of updates for many around the globe.

BBC information Arabic compiled engagement data on the Facebook pages of 20 prominent Palestinian-based information organisations in the year leading up to the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel, and in the year since.

Engagement is a key assess of how much impact a social media account is having and how many people are seeing its content. It includes such factors as the number of comments, reactions and shares.

Bar chart entitled "Facebook engagement with Palestinian news outlets" - the vertical axis is titled "Average engagement" - one bar shows stats for November 2022-October 2023. This is put at a figure of nearly 0.07. The second bar shows average engagement for October 2023-September 2024 (in other words, from when the Israel-Gaza war began) - this figure is only just above 0.01

During a period of war, spectators engagement might be expected to rise. However, the data showed a 77% decline after the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023.

Palestine TV has 5.8 million followers on Facebook. Journalists at the newsroom shared statistics with us showing a 60% drop in the number of people seeing their posts.

“Interaction was completely restricted, and our posts stopped reaching people,” says Tariq Ziad, a journalist at the channel.

Over the history year, Palestinian journalists have raised fears that their online content is being “shadow-banned” by Meta – in other words, restricted in how many people view it.

To test this, we carried out the same data analysis on the Facebook pages of 20 Israeli information organisations such as Yediot Ahronot, Israel Hayom and Channel 13. These pages also posted a large amount of war-related content, but their spectators engagement increased by nearly 37%.

Bar chart entitled "Facebook audience engagement with Israeli news outlets" - identical in format to the previous bar chart, the two bars on the chart show that average engagement from November 2022-October 2023 was just under 0.2, and then rose to more than 2.5 between October 2023-September 2024

Meta has previously been accused by Palestinians and human rights groups of failing to moderate online activity fairly.

An independent update in 2021 commissioned by the business said this was not deliberate but because of a lack of Arabic-speaking expertise among moderators. Words and phrases were being interpreted as offensive or violent, when they were in truth innocuous.

For example, the Arabic phrase “Alhamdulillah”, which means “compliment be to God”, was sometimes being auto-translated as “compliment be to God, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their liberty”.

To view if this explained the decline in engagement with Palestinian outlets, the BBC carried out the same analysis on Facebook pages for 30 prominent Arabic-language information sources based elsewhere, such as Sky information Arabia and Al-Jazeera.

However, these pages saw an average boost in engagement of nearly 100%.

Bar chart entitled "Facebook audience engagement with Arabic news outlets (non-Palestinian" - this one shows that audience engagement from November 2022-October 2023 was at nearly 0.5, and from October 2023 to September 2024 it was nearly 0.8.

Responding to our research, Meta pointed out that it had made no secret of “temporary product and policy measures” taken in October 2023.

It said it had faced a test balancing the correct to liberty of talk, with the truth that Hamas was both US-sanctioned and designated as a risky organisation under Meta’s own policies.

The tech giant also said that pages posting exclusively about the war were more likely to view engagement impacted.

“We acknowledge we make mistakes, but any implication that we deliberately suppress a particular voice is unequivocally untrue,” a spokesperson said.

Leaked Instagram documents

The BBC has also spoken to five former and current employees of Meta about the impact they declare their business’s policies have had on person Palestinian users.

One person, who spoke anonymously, shared leaked internal documents about a transformation made to Instagram’s algorithm, which toughened the moderation of Palestinians commenting on Instagram posts.

“Within a week of the Hamas attack, the code was changed essentially making it more aggressive towards Palestinian people,” he said.

Internal messages display that an engineer raised concerns about the order, worried that it could be “introducing a recent bias into the structure against Palestinian users”.

Meta confirmed it took the assess but said it had been essential to respond to what it called a “spike in hateful content” coming out of the Palestinian territories.

It said that policy changes put in place at the commence of the Israel-Gaza war had now been reversed, but did not declare when this happened.

At least 137 Palestinian journalists are reported to have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the dispute, but a few carry on despite the dangers.

Getty Images Four Palestinian journalists are pictured, all of them wearing blue flak jackets with the word "press" on them. They are holding pictures of Hamza Murteca in his memory. It appears to be a sunny day and they are all standing on a street in Gaza.Getty Images
August 2024: Palestinian journalists commemorate Hamza Murteca, one of 137 of their colleagues reported killed since October 2023

“A lot of information can’t be published as it is too graphic – for example if the [Israeli] army commits a massacre and we film it, the video won’t spread,” says Omar el Qataa, one of the few photojournalists who chose to remain in northern Gaza.

“But in spite of the challenges, the risks, and the content bans,” he says,”we must continue sharing Palestinian content.”

Additional reporting by Rehab Ismail and Natalie Merzougui



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