loading…
Instagram has been widely criticized for being unfriendly to pro-Palestinian content. (Photo: TachCrunch)
JAKARTA – The simple question of whether Instagram supports Israel has recently emerged among the public, especially those who sympathize with the Palestinian struggle to free themselves from colonialism and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
This question stems from the Israeli and Palestinian conflict which not only occurs in the real world, but also extends to social media, as part of the information battle for public sympathy. Social media platforms such as X, Instagram, Meta, TikTok are flooded with content related to Israel, Hamas and Palestine.
Recently, in the name of eradicating hoaxes, security, cleaning up violent content and other reasons, many pro-Palestinian cause accounts cannot be accessed, have been shadow banned, censored and similar restrictions. Social media platform owners, including Meta, have widely denied doing this, but there are a number of other facts.
The following is a series of events that raise the question of whether Instagram supports Israel?
1. Instagram Calls Palestinians terrorists
This incident started with a report from an Instagram user @khanman1996. He objected because his bio account, which included the words Palestine, the Palestinian flag and the word Alhamdulillah, was automatically translated as Palestinian terrorist by Instagram.
Meta also apologized for this incident. “We sincerely apologize for this incident,” a Meta spokesperson told Gizmodo, Saturday (21/10/2023). Meta also promised to fix the problem of the inappropriate Arabic translation.
2. Many pro-Palestinian posts are censored
To Aljazeera, a marketing manager from Brussels, some time ago, suspected that his feed of posts about Palestine on Instagram Stories had dropped sharply. “I have about 800 followers, and usually I get 200 views for a story. But when I started posting about Palestine, I noticed my views were dropping.” In fact, he said, the story did not contain graphic images or contain hate speech.
Another Instagram user, a 29-year-old mechanical engineer from India who also requested anonymity, saw his Instagram stories about protests in Los Angeles and San Francisco not get a single view even after an hour. “That’s unusual,” he said. Then he posted a selfie, which got the usual engagement he usually gets.
Other users had similar experiences and complained on the social media platform itself. “After posting an Instagram story about the war in Gaza yesterday, my account was censored,” said Pulitzer-winning journalist Azmat Khan on X.
Pakistani writer Fatima Bhutto also said Instagram censored her and restricted comments and story views. “I learned so much about how democracies and big tech work together to suppress information during illegal wars that they can’t agree to,” he said in X.
In a video posted to Instagram, he said his posts were not appearing in his followers’ feeds on the platform.
Ameer Al-Khatahtbeg, founder and editor-in-chief of Muslim, a news site focused on Muslim issues, saw posts from the publication reach far fewer people on Instagram in recent days, down from 1.2 million before the start war, to a little over 160,000 a week after the war began.