Facebook, Twitter continue to block pro-Palestinian activists, blame software glitches

The companies claim that issues related to the pro-Palestinian posts were quickly fixed and the accounts were restored

Social media platforms giants Facebook and Twitter blocked or restricted millions of pro-Palestinian posts and accounts related to the Israel-Palestine conflict and blamed it on glitches in their artificial intelligence software.

Twitter’s service temporarily blocked pro-Palestine users, mistakenly identifying numerous tweets put up by them as spam, the company told The Washington Post. Similarly, Facebook-owned Instagram said that its software to detect hate speech on the platform misidentified a key hashtag as being associated with a terrorist group. The company also said that its platform got a bug that blocked video-sharing temporarily.

According to experts in free speech and technology, roots of this issue are connected to a bigger problem of software algorithms that are designed to protect but are instead being used to suppress voices of marginalised communities that rely on social media to build support.

Read | Israel, Palestine celebrate ceasefire, but will anything change?

The Washington Post reported that this issue has been raised by Black Americans for years. They have complained that the AI software of social media platforms flag posts that discuss race on a regular basis.

Facebook and Twitter claim that issues related to the pro-Palestinian posts were quickly fixed and the accounts were restored. Some activists say, however, that many posts and accounts are still restricted.

A Palestinian-American journalist, Mariam Barghouti’s Twitter account was restricted for violating the platform’s policies while covering a protest. She later posted about it on her Instagram. The company's spokeswoman acknowledged the error and said her account was later restored.

According to 7amleh, the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, 170 Instagram posts and five Twitter posts that were wrongly removed are still not found on the sites. A report by the group in late May mentioned that as per the companies, they are still reviewing the remaining posts.

To handle the public relations crisis of Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg had sent Nick Clegg, the company’s top policy executive, to meet the leaders of Israel and Palestine.