{"id":17919,"date":"2023-12-22T20:14:08","date_gmt":"2023-12-22T18:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=17919"},"modified":"2026-10-08T20:38:58","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T18:38:58","slug":"algorithms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/algorithms\/","title":{"rendered":"Machine against Human: Voices Supporting Gaza in the Crosshairs of Algorithms"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the 77th day of the war on the Gaza Strip, social media platforms are still arenas of war and confrontation between supporters of Gaza and supporters of the occupation. It seems that we are living in the golden age of suppressing pro-Palestine content on social media platforms. In response to the besieging of Palestinian content, through its removal or the blocking of its reach, activists around the world launched a campaign<\/a> titled “We Will Not Be Silenced” in protest against the banning of pro-Palestine content and the restriction of its reach across social media platforms, especially Facebook and Instagram.<\/p>\n

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Lies Spread Despite Algorithmic Control<\/h3>\n

Although algorithms are supposed to fight lies and hate on social media, the spread of misleading news<\/a> has filled these platforms with negativity and hostility, which may discourage those interested in following events in Palestine or in accessing reliable information about the cause.<\/p>\n

For example, users on various platforms circulated a video<\/a> showing an Israeli girl holding German citizenship, unconscious after being abducted by fighters of the Al-Qassam Brigades from the “Supernova” music festival in Kibbutz Re’im, located in the Gaza envelope, being beaten, then burned and killed, according to the video. According to Reuters, the widely circulated video dates back to 2015 and to the execution of a 16-year-old girl in Rio Bravo, Guatemala.<\/p>\n

A video<\/a> of 5 Israeli children held in an animal cage in Gaza also spread. The video went viral on social media platforms such as TikTok, Facebook and YouTube and showed 5 children held in an animal cage at the hands of Hamas fighters, and the viewer can hear the person filming laughing. According to FakeReporter, an Israeli website for verifying misleading information, the video was posted on TikTok 3 or 4 days before Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. It was filmed by a TikTok user in Poland as a joke and has nothing to do with the latest war on Gaza.<\/p>\n

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Silencing Voices Supporting Palestine<\/h3>\n

Human Rights Watch<\/a> said that Meta’s content moderation policies and systems are increasingly silencing voices in support of Palestine on Instagram and Facebook since the outbreak of fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups on 7 October.<\/p>\n

In a report<\/a> titled “Meta’s Broken Promises: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content on Instagram and Facebook”, the organisation documented a systematic pattern of unjustified and repressive removal of comments and posts and cancellation of accounts, including peaceful expression in support of Palestine and debate about Palestinians’ human rights.<\/p>\n

Human Rights Watch concluded that the root of the problem lies in flawed Meta policies, their inconsistent and erroneous implementation, over-reliance on automated tools to moderate content, and undue government influence over content removals.<\/p>\n

Human Rights Watch pointed to 6 key patterns of censorship: content removal, suspension or deletion of accounts, inability to engage with content, inability to follow or tag accounts, restrictions on the use of live-streaming features on Facebook\/Instagram, and a significant drop in the visibility of a person’s posts, stories or account without notification. In more than 300 cases, users were unable to appeal the removal of content or of an account because of a malfunction in the appeal mechanism.<\/p>\n

The organisation says it documented that Meta relied in hundreds of cases on the “terrorist organisations” lists drawn up by the United States, and adopted a policy of restricting legitimate expression about hostilities between Israel and Palestinian armed groups. Meta removed dozens of newsworthy posts documenting Palestinian injuries and deaths.<\/p>\n

According to the Sada Social<\/a> centre, which specialises in monitoring and documenting digital violations against Palestinian content, 3,000 digital violations against Palestinian content were recorded during the past month.<\/p>\n

The Guardian also said that Facebook deleted the page of the Quds News Network, which has 10 million followers, while activists complained that searching for the words “Palestinian” or “Palestinian Muslim child” on WhatsApp brought up a sticker or image of a child holding a gun, while an image of a child playing appears when searching for “Israeli child”.<\/p>\n

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The Influence of Social Media<\/h3>\n

Experts<\/a> believe that social media platforms have great power to influence societies, as they have turned into battlefields, while others believe that the lack of clarity about how these platforms’ algorithms work makes them an arena for spreading false information. These platforms always point out that safety and security standards<\/a> are applied to all users, and stress the need to observe these standards when dealing with any user. These standards are periodically updated by the United Nations<\/a> and are supposed to be applied to all users in the same way.<\/p>\n

In this regard, Basma Fouad, head of the Independents International Foundation, said: “The events after 7 October highlighted the role of supporters of the Palestinian cause, who had a great impact on mobilising international public opinion and influencing governments, and they also had an effect in revealing the facts and curbing the lies and misleading information about the occupation state and the crimes they committed against the Palestinian people.”<\/p>\n

Fouad added in her statement to Zawia3 that social media sites were affected either negatively or positively, meaning that some platforms that did not remain neutral towards the two sides, including Facebook, saw their rating drop in the eyes of the public during the past period, which led many users to turn to other platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok, which were more neutral, raising their usage and engagement rates.<\/p>\n

Fouad described her experience with Facebook after the Independents International Foundation published statements in solidarity with the Palestinian people and denouncing the Zionist war on Gaza, saying: “The foundation’s page was hacked.” According to Fouad, “Facebook did not provide any help to recover the page.”<\/p>\n

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Searching for an Outlet to Express Opinions<\/h3>\n

In recent days, many have turned to platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram to express their opinions more freely, given that their posts are less exposed to blocking compared with platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.<\/p>\n

Although X confirmed that it had deleted thousands of posts related to the war on Gaza, the spread of misleading information on it was lower because of the “Notes” feature, through which a comment can be written.<\/p>\n

X, Meta and Google ban Hamas accounts, but Telegram, a company founded by a Russian-born businessman and now based in Dubai, decided to allow the movement to keep using its service.<\/p>\n

The Telegram channel of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, had about 200,000 followers at the time of the attack. Since then, the number of the channel’s followers has more than tripled, according to an analysis by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab).<\/p>\n

Before the attack, the channel’s posts were viewed on average about 25,000 times; the average has now risen to more than 300,000 times, an increase of more than tenfold.<\/p>\n

According to the report<\/a> issued by the Jordanian Politics and Society Institute, the volume of global online conversations exceeded 311 million conversations and 1.5 billion interactions in just 14 days. According to the report, global engagement statistics multiplied during the last week by more than 200% at some levels. The main platform for conversation and engagement was X (formerly Twitter), with a 96.5% share of conversations and 76% of engagement, followed by TikTok with 10.5%.<\/p>\n

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Standards or Imposing Control?<\/h3>\n

Information security expert Dr Gamal Mokhtar told Zawia3 that social media platforms are supposed to use standards to limit improper behaviour or acts by some of their users that harm certain parties, noting that these standards are updated periodically, which is normal and legal. However, it is not at all legal for these platforms to impose control over users’ opinions and block their pages simply for defending the Palestinian cause, which the war on Gaza has recently brought to the fore, amid the unconditional support these platforms provide to the Israeli side. Any posts that support the Palestinian side and document Zionist crimes are blocked, and the matter can escalate to closing pages<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The information security expert pointed out that despite all the restrictions imposed by these platforms, they face “the power of citizens”, which has helped change global opinion towards the Palestinian cause, as seen in the support of a large number of citizens of European countries for the Palestinian cause, in his words.<\/p>\n

The Jordanian Politics and Society Institute’s report<\/a> stated that digital committees in India engage with the Israeli occupation’s narrative in an organised way to put it at the top of the statistics, alongside other organised activity in Europe and North America. However, the Arab public’s awareness of such organised work opened a counter space that overturned the balance of the leading narrative and made the two narratives almost equal.<\/p>\n

The report explained that when analysing conversations and engagement over time, it was noted that at the start of events engagement grew faster than conversations were generated, until the public formed its positions and the volume of conversation became parallel to the rate of engagement.<\/p>\n

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Bassem Youssef’s Interview: The Most Widespread<\/h3>\n

Writer and political analyst Sara Mansour Allam told Zawia3 that social media sites are one of the important media outlets of the modern era following technological progress and globalisation, and that they have a clear influence on all individuals and peoples.<\/p>\n

She added that social media sites in most Western countries work in favour of Israel and Zionism; they did not publish the truth but deliberately spread lies and misleading information to influence global public opinion in general and Arab public opinion in particular.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Allam added that in Arab countries and the Middle East region there is great awareness among intellectuals, elites and young people, and everyone believes in the rights of the Palestinian people and in Palestine’s right to be a sovereign state.<\/p>\n

Despite the many challenges, including rumour-mongers among enemies in the West, as Allam described them, the matter requires more cooperation and solidarity to spread the truth about the Palestinian cause.<\/p>\n

Analysing this hostile political stance by deceivers in the West, the political analyst noted that it pushes us to make more effort and be more serious in presenting the facts, exposing lies and confronting rumours from misleading media and social media sites. This is what many influencers and media professionals are doing to clarify the reality of the current situation at the global level.<\/p>\n

According to the Jordanian Politics and Society Institute’s report<\/a>, Egyptian media figure Bassem Youssef’s interview with Piers Morgan had the greatest impact globally, enabling the anti-Israel narrative to take the lead within just 48 hours in English-language and visual content.<\/p>\n

Amid all this conflict, social media platforms and some Western media gave the Israeli government the cover it needs to continue the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people with impunity. It is therefore necessary to shed light on Arab voices instead of erasing them, by continuing to support them and share their content. The endless footage of documented violence against Palestinians should not remain confined to social media channels, which face a different form of censorship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social media algorithms are silencing pro-Palestine voices during the Gaza war while misinformation spreads, rights groups and experts say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":7303,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[390],"tags":[18237,18238,18234,18231,18235,18230,18232,18233,18236,18239],"kateb":[1445],"class_list":["post-17919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-bassem-youssef-piers-morgan-interview","tag-digital-rights-palestine","tag-gaza-war-misinformation","tag-human-rights-watch-meta-report","tag-instagram-and-facebook-censorship","tag-meta-censorship-of-palestine-content","tag-pro-palestine-content","tag-social-media-algorithms","tag-telegram-and-hamas","tag-we-will-not-be-silenced-campaign","kateb-mai-soudi"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/\u062d\u062c\u0628-\u0627\u0644\u0645\u062d\u062a\u0648\u0649.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17920,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17919\/revisions\/17920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17919"},{"taxonomy":"kateb","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kateb?post=17919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}