![\"Hand](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/c2153f30e470985fc5843fc76ba55da9553623d0\/0_0_2455_1472\/master\/2455.jpg?width=460&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=658c3c3ca235fd62132f87d2eea67841\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u201cAmidst the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, a humanitarian catastrophe including the deaths of thousands of civilians in Gaza, and the killing of dozens of journalists, it is more important than ever that social media platforms do not censor truthful and legitimate content, particularly as people around the world turn to online communities to share and find information about developments in the region,\u201d Warren said in the letter,\u00a0first published\u00a0by the Intercept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hundreds of users\u00a0have reported\u00a0that posts on Instagram related to Palestine were limited or removed with little explanation, while others have found their accounts entirely suspended. Meta previously attributed these removals to glitches in its systems, but an independent analysis commissioned by the company in 2021\u00a0found\u00a0that it had previously violated Palestinian human rights by censoring content related to previous Israeli attacks on Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The letter also cites a report from the Wall Street Journal that\u00a0revealed\u00a0Meta had implemented a \u201ctemporary risk response measure\u201d that automatically flagged posts about Palestine at a higher rate. The company\u2019s system typically hides or suppresses content when they are 80% certain it is inflammatory, but in the weeks after the 7 October attacks it reduced that threshold to 25%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such alleged removals and suppressions are ongoing, with Columbia University\u2019s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine stating its Instagram account was\u00a0suspended\u00a0without explanation on 12 December. On 13 December Instagram introduced a new fact-checking tool that\u00a0many claimed\u00a0was disproportionately filtering out information about Palestine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to expressing concern about the alleged censorship, Warren noted other disturbing incidents, including one in which Instagram\u00a0mistakenly\u00a0added \u201cterrorist\u201d to profiles of Palestinian users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meta did not immediately respond to request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Warren posed dozens of questions to Zuckerberg relating to exactly how Meta moderates content and why, while requesting a list of every instance in the past five years in which Meta has changed the content-moderation threshold for a particular nation or territory and the numbers of posts removed from the platform. She also requested details on whether Meta made changes following the inquiry into its 2021 suppression of Palestinian voices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cReports of Meta\u2019s suppression of Palestinian voices raise serious questions about Meta\u2019s content moderation practices and anti-discrimination protections,\u201d she wrote. \u201cSocial media users deserve to know when and why their accounts and posts are restricted, particularly on the largest platforms where vital information-sharing occurs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Warren has requested answers to these questions by 5 January 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US senator\u00a0Elizabeth Warren\u00a0issued a letter Thursday to Mark Zuckerberg demanding information relating to allegations of suppression of pro-Palestine content on Meta platforms. Warren cited a statement\u00a0co-signed\u00a0by more than 90 human rights and civil rights organizations and listed various media reports and concerns about Meta\u2019s censorship, removal and mistranslation of Palestine-related content since Hamas attacks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":36827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,12],"tags":[11264,11394,6848,7340,10818,10767,9520,11858,2629,5930,10771,10888,10840,8394,3095,10419,10454,332,8396,11973,6332,8637,5568,8386,10722,5807,6082,5349,11325,6047,7609,214,6348,10829,9064,36],"class_list":["post-40831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-world-news","tag-allegations","tag-attacks","tag-civilians","tag-columbia","tag-columbia-university","tag-conflict","tag-discrimination","tag-flagged","tag-gaza","tag-hamas","tag-horrific","tag-human-right-organisation","tag-human-rights","tag-instagram","tag-israel","tag-justice","tag-killing","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-meta","tag-one","tag-online","tag-palestine","tag-palestinian","tag-platform","tag-removed","tag-risk","tag-senator","tag-social-media","tag-street","tag-students","tag-terrorist","tag-university","tag-us","tag-wall-street","tag-wall-street-journal","tag-world"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40832,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40831\/revisions\/40832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}