Facebook ‘Restricted’ Palestinian News Content

Matthew Broersma,
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Facebook has ‘severely restricted’ news content from Palestinian outlets since October 2023 amidst bias concerns, says BBC report

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Facebook has “severely restricted” the reach of Palestinian news outlets on the platform since the Gaza conflict began in October 2023, the BBC reported.

The corporation said it analysed Facebook data and found that newsrooms in Gaza and the West Bank, such as Palestine TV, Wafa news agency and Palestinian Al-Watan News, had shown a 77 percent drop in audience engagement during the period.

During the same period prominent Arabic-language news sources based elsewhere, such as Sky News Arabia and Al-Jazeera, saw an average increase in engagement of nearly 100 percent.

The Facebook pages of 20 Israeli news organisations, including Yediot Ahronot, Israel Hayom and Channel 13, posted a large amount of war-related content but saw a rise in engagement of nearly 37 percent.

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‘Bias’

The report cited a journalist with Palestine TV as saying that the organisation’s posts “stopped reaching people”.

Palestinian journalists have raised concerns that their content is being “shadow-banned”, which Facebook parent Meta said is not the case.

The company said it made no secret it had introduced “temporary product and policy measures” in October 2023.

The BBC report also cited internal Meta documents that it said showed a change to Instagram’s algorithm toughening moderation of Palestinians commenting on Instagram posts.

An engineer at the company raised a concern that the change could be “introducing a new bias into the system against Palestinian users”, the report said.

Meta confirmed making the change, but said it was a necessary response to a “spike in hateful content” coming from the Palestinian territories.

It said the temporary changes have now been reversed, but did not say when this had occurred.

Content moderation

“We acknowledge we make mistakes, but any implication that we deliberately suppress a particular voice is unequivocally false,” the company said in a statement.

In December 2023 Meta’s oversight board overruled the takedown of two graphic videos related to the war, saying they should be reinstated.

The reach of social media has made companies’ moderation decisions increasingly sensitive, especially during violent events such as wars or riots, a topic directly addressed in new Ofcom rules mandated by the Online Safety Act.