"Facebook report concludes company censorship violated Palestinian human rights" 21 September 2022

FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM’S speech policies harmed fundamental human rights of Palestinian users during a conflagration that saw heavy Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip last May, according to a study commissioned by the social media sites’ parent company Meta.

“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,” says the...report...

Commissioned by Meta last year and conducted by the independent consultancy Business for Social Responsibility [BSR]...the report focuses on the company’s censorship practices and allegations of bias during bouts of violence against Palestinian people by Israeli forces last spring...

While BSR credits Meta for taking steps to improve its policies, it further blames “a lack of oversight at Meta that allowed content policy errors with significant consequences to occur.”

Though BSR is clear in stating that Meta harms Palestinian rights with the censorship apparatus it alone has constructed, the report absolves Meta of “intentional bias”...

Meta responded to the BSR report...“Meta’s publication of this response should not be construed as an admission, agreement with, or acceptance of any of the findings, conclusions, opinions or viewpoints identified by BSR, nor should the implementation of any suggested reforms be taken as admission of wrongdoing”...

According to the findings of BSR’s report, Meta deleted Arabic content relating to the violence at a far greater rate than Hebrew-language posts, confirming long-running complaints of disparate speech enforcement in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict...