How Facebook blocked news coming from the Palestinian territories

Since the start of Israel’s war with Gaza – very few reporters have been allowed to enter the Palestinian territory of Gaza, and they are only allowed to do so accompanied by Israeli forces.

Social media has filled the gap for those who want to hear what is happening in Gaza who are not in the city.

Facebook pages such as Palestine TV, Wafa News Agency and Palestinian Al-Watan – which operate as far away as the West Bank and the Jordan River – have become sources of news around the world.

The BBC’s Arabic department has gathered information on how 20 pages that are prominent on Facebook in spreading news have become the champions of the poison test last year after the attack on October 7 and this year.

The way people express their opinions is one of the ways to determine the influence of a page and how many people see what it publishes. Expressing an opinion and showing concern or re-posting the story to the world is one of the main things that are noticed.

During the war, page followers are expected to increase. However, statistics show that they have decreased by 77 percent after the October 7 attack by Hamas in 2023.

Palestine TV has 5.8 million followers on Facebook. Local journalists have shown a 60 percent drop in followers viewing their pages.

“It is forbidden to express opinions or concerns about what is published, what we publish does not reach our followers,” said Tariq Zaid, a journalist who works for the channel.

A year later, Palestinian journalists expressed concern that Meta was restricting what they published – or limiting how many people could see it.

In order to prove this, we used the same demographics to follow the top 20 Israeli news sites such as Yediot Ahronot, Israel Hayom and Channel 13.

These sites published articles related to the war, but their followers increased by 37 percent.

In the past, human rights groups and Palestinians have accused Meta of failing to monitor what is happening on its pages independently.

A report released by the company in 2021 said that this is happening without their knowledge – and this is due to the fact that children who speak Arabic are among those who wear glasses.

The comments posted are often interpreted as violent, and they don’t mean it that way.

For example, “Alhamdulillah”, it means “thanks to God” but in the translation it shows the word for freedom used by terrorists.

Responding to our inquiry, the company has shown that there is nothing hidden about the measures it is taking in its policy since October 2023.

He said he faces challenges in assessing freedom of expression, and the fact that the United States has sanctioned Hamas and declared them a dangerous organization under Meta’s rules.

The company said that only sites that publish content about the war will see significant improvements.

The BBC spoke to five people who used to work with Meta and others who are currently working with the company and said that the company has policies on individual Palestinians who use its sites.

An anonymous person revealed some secret information about the change made in the collection of Instagram information, which is leading the way to clean up the views of Palestinians that are published.

“During the week of the attack by Hamas, the system was changed and it was made stricter against the Palestinian voices,” he said.

Some internal messages show how an engineer expressed concern about the change, that a new bias has been introduced in the system that will work against Palestinian users of Instagram”.

Meta said he had made some necessary changes to what he called “speech of hate” coming from the Palestinian territories.

He said that the new system brought after the start of the war between Israel and Gaza has now been withdrawn, but he did not say when this happened.

At least 137 Palestinians have been killed since the Gaza war began – but few continue the operation because of the risks involved.