New York — On Wednesday, Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms announced a temporary ban on “potentially unwelcome or unwanted comments” on posts pertaining to the Israeli-Hamas conflict.
In a revised blog post, Meta stated that it will restrict comments on newly uploaded, public Facebook posts by users “in the region” to their friends and followers by default.
A representative for Meta declined to elaborate on how the business determined the area. As per Meta, users are free to modify and withdraw their consent at any moment.
The social media giant also said that it will stop allowing users to browse through the Facebook feed and see the first one or two comments on postings.
“Everyone has a voice and our policies are made to keep people safe on our apps.” stated Meta. “We enforce these policies uniformly worldwide, and the notion that we are purposefully stifling speech is unfounded.”
Some individuals who expressed sympathy for Gazans or Palestine earlier this week claimed that Meta was censoring their posts. Content that praises Hamas is prohibited by Meta, which labels the organization as “dangerous.”
On October 10, Mondoweiss, a news outlet that reports on Palestinian human rights, announced on the social media platform X that Instagram had twice removed its video correspondent’s profile. Several Instagram users complained that no one was viewing their stories and postings about Palestine.
A glitch on Instagram that caused re-posted content to not display correctly in a user’s story—which vanishes after 24 hours—was reportedly fixed, according to Meta.
“This bug had nothing to do with the subject matter of the content and affected accounts equally around the globe, not just people trying to post about what’s happening in Israel and Gaza,” according to Meta.
