Human Rights Watch charged on Thursday that Meta has been censoring or eliminating information that supports Palestinian human rights or Palestine on many occasions, even though the content did not break any of the social media behemoth's policies.
Although the content did not breach any regulations, the investigation expresses concerns over instances of "peaceful" pro-Palestine content that the business allegedly erased. The organization also demands that Meta clarify or amend a number of its rules and moderation choices, including government takedown requests and instances in which it grants exceptions for "newsworthiness" to allow content that transgresses its policies to remain online.
Human Rights Watch stated in the study that "Meta should permit protected expression, including about human rights abuses and political movements, on its platforms" and encouraged Meta to apply its standards uniformly to all users.
Human Rights Watch did not supply screenshots and only offered limited details on the hundreds of postings it said were banned or erased, but it did characterize the removed content in general terms.
The organization claimed to have located over a thousand pro-Palestinian pieces of material that were either banned or deleted in October and November of 2023, even though they did not break any of Meta's policies.
Posts depicting pictures of wounded or dead bodies in Gaza hospitals and remarks like "Free Palestine" and "Stop Genocide" were among them. Another incident, according to the organization, included a user trying to make a message that was simply a string of Palestinian flag emojis. Instagram warned the user that her comment “may be hurtful to others.”
In the report, the organization makes no claims about the relative over-enforcement of pro-Palestinian groups compared to other groups.
In a statement, Meta stated that the Human Rights Watch report did not accurately represent its attempts to safeguard expression about the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
In a statement sent by spokesperson Ben Walters, Meta stated, "This report ignores the realities of enforcing our policies globally during a fast-moving, highly polarised, and intense conflict, which has led to an increase in content being reported to us."