As Israel imposed an internet blackout in Gaza on Friday, social media users posting about the grim conditions have contended with erratic and often unexplained censorship of content related to Palestine on Instagram and Facebook.
Since Israel launched retaliatory airstrikes in Gaza after the October 7 Hamas attack, Facebook and Instagram users have reported widespread deletions of their content, translations inserting the word “terrorist” into Palestinian Instagram profiles, and suppressed hashtags. Instagram comments containing the Palestinian flag emoji have also been hidden, according to 7amleh, a Palestinian digital rights group that formally collaborates with Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, on regional speech issues.
Numerous users have reported to 7amleh that their comments were moved to the bottom of the comments section and require a click to display. Many of the remarks have something in common: “It often seemed to coincide with having a Palestinian flag in the comment,” 7amleh spokesperson Eric Sype told The Intercept.
Users report that Instagram had flagged and hidden comments containing the emoji as “potentially offensive,” TechCrunch first reported last week. Meta has routinely attributed similar instances of alleged censorship to technical glitches. Meta confirmed to The Intercept that the company has been hiding comments that contain the Palestinian flag emoji in certain “offensive” contexts that violate the company’s rules.
“The notion of finding a flag offensive is deeply distressing for Palestinians,” Mona Shtaya, a nonresident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy who follows Meta’s policymaking on speech, told The Intercept.
“The notion of finding a flag offensive is deeply distressing for Palestinians.”
Asked about the contexts in which Meta hides the flag, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone pointed to the Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy, which designates Hamas as a terrorist organization, and cited a section of the community standards rulebook that prohibits any content “praising, celebrating or mocking anyone’s death.”
It remains unclear, however, precisely how Meta determines whether the use of the flag emoji is offensive enough to suppress. The Intercept reviewed several hidden comments containing the Palestinian flag emoji that had no reference to Hamas or any other banned group. The Palestinian flag itself has no formal association with Hamas and predates the militant group by decades.
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Sam Biddle is a technology reporter focusing on issues of surveillance, privacy, and corporate power. He was previously a senior writer at Gawker, and his work has also appeared in GQ, Vice, and the New York Times magazine, among other outlets.
