Citing the company\u2019s<\/u> \u201cfailure to provide answers to important questions,\u201d Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., are pressing Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, to respond to reports of disproportionate censorship around the Israeli war on Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMeta insists that there\u2019s been no discrimination against Palestinian-related content on their platforms, but at the same time, is refusing to provide us with any evidence or data to support that claim,” Warren told The Intercept. “If its ad-hoc changes and removal of millions of posts didn\u2019t discriminate against Palestinian-related content, then what\u2019s Meta hiding?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent last December, first reported by The Intercept<\/a>, Warren presented the company with dozens of specific questions about the company\u2019s Gaza-related content moderation efforts. Warren asked about the exact numbers of posts about the war, broken down by Hebrew or Arabic, that have been deleted or otherwise suppressed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The letter was written following widespread<\/a> reporting<\/a> in The Intercept and other outlets that detailed how posts on Meta platforms<\/a> that are sympathetic<\/a> to Palestinians<\/a>, or merely depicting<\/a> the destruction<\/a> in Gaza, are routinely removed or hidden<\/a> without explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A month later, Meta replied<\/a> to Warren\u2019s office with a six-page letter, obtained by The Intercept, that provided an overview of its moderation response to the war but little in the way of specifics or new information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Meta\u2019s reply disclosed some censorship: “In the nine days following October 7, we removed or marked as disturbing more than 2,200,000 pieces of content in Hebrew and Arabic for violating our policies.” The company declined, however, to provide a breakdown of deletions by language or market, making it impossible to tell whether that figure reflects discriminatory moderation practices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Much of Meta\u2019s letter is a rehash of an update it provided through its public relations portal<\/a> at the war\u2019s onset, some of it verbatim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, a second letter<\/a> from Warren to Meta, joined this time by Sanders, says this isn\u2019t enough. \u201cMeta\u2019s response, dated January 29, 2024, did not provide any of the requested information necessary to understand Meta\u2019s treatment of Arabic language or Palestine-related content versus other forms of content,\u201d the senators wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both senators are asking Meta to again answer Warren\u2019s specific questions about the extent to which Arabic and Hebrew posts about the war have been treated differently, how often censored posts are reinstated, Meta\u2019s use of automated machine learning-based censorship tools, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Accusations of systemic moderation bias against Palestinians have been borne out by research from rights groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSince October 7, Human Rights Watch has documented over 1,000 cases of unjustified takedowns and other suppression of content on Instagram and Facebook related to Palestine and Palestinians, including about human rights abuses,\u201d Human Rights Watch said in a late December report. \u201cThe censorship of content related to Palestine on Instagram and Facebook is systemic, global, and a product of the company\u2019s failure to meet its human rights due diligence responsibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n A February report by AccessNow<\/a> said Meta \u201csuspended or restricted the accounts of Palestinian journalists and activists both in and outside of Gaza, and arbitrarily deleted a considerable amount of content, including documentation of atrocities and human rights abuses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A third-party audit commissioned by Meta itself previously concluded it had given the short shrift to Palestinian rights during a May 2021 flare-up<\/a> of violence<\/a> between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip. \u201cMeta\u2019s actions in May 2021 appear to have had an adverse human rights impact \u2026 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,\u201d said the auditor\u2019s report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n In response to this audit, Meta pledged an array of reforms, which free expression and digital rights advocates say have yet to produce a material improvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In its December report, Human Rights Watch noted, \u201cMore than two years after committing to publishing data around government requests for taking down content that is not necessarily illegal, Meta has failed to increase transparency in this area.\u201d<\/p>\n The post Meta Refuses to Answer Questions on Gaza Censorship, Say Sens. Warren and Sanders<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on The Intercept<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the days after October 7, Meta said it removed more than 2 million pieces of Hebrew and Arabic content, but didn\u2019t break down the data.<\/p>\n The post Meta Refuses to Answer Questions on Gaza Censorship, Say Sens. Warren and Sanders<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,369,340],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574392"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/365"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1574392"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1576213,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574392\/revisions\/1576213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1574392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1574392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1574392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}