Hyderabad: Pages on Instagram have been calling out the Facebook-owned social media platform for reportedly deleting posts, blocking hashtags and suspending accounts that have been critical of Israel’s actions and bombing of Gaza over the past week .
Muslim, a page with 1.1 million followers alleged that Instagram is silencing the reach of key public figures, pages, organisations and platforms. It also said that individuals who post about Palestine are not showing up on search. The page also said that individuals who post about Palestine are being threatened with deletion of their account.
The page also reported that individuals who post about Palestine are not showing up on searches, and added that others who post about (or pro) Palestine are being stopped from going live as well.
Muslim.Daily, another page on Instagram with 4,47,000 followers said “over the past week we’ve seen Instagram remove posts and stories of people sharing news related to Israel’s attack on Masjid Al Aqsa and news of Sheikh Jarrah. The page stated that the social media platform claimed that those posts “violated guidelines,” which the page says is completely false.
The page claimed “I had a post removed which was just pictures of Israeli police assualting Palestinian civilians.” It added that it has also been warned of a ban by Instagram many times.
Muslim.Daily has also also reported that it had been “shadow banned” (doesn’t show up in the search bar) by Instagram so that it doesn’t reach many people. https://www.instagram.com/p/COwAC05o38W/?igshid=oe3jed789xkq
Another page, Doamuslims, which has always been at the forefront of reporting the persecution in Palestine and other regions, was removed altogether for three days before being restored after a public outcry. It has 175k followers. The non-profit organisation based in the UK posted from its other account saying “Instagram has disabled our account simply because we were posting about the attack on Al Aqsa mosque.”
A local page being run (by students, presumably) from the Aligarh Muslim University, ‘amu_citizens2’, alleged that Instagram has been supporting Israel in its own way by blocking the hashtag ‘#Gazaunderattack’ and making sure that Palestinian voices don’t reach the world. Other pages also reported that using hashtags related to the conflict such as #alasqa #gazaunderattack #freepalestine is limiting the reach of their posts.
The non profit rights group, 7amleh, said that they received over 200 complaints about related posts and suspended accounts related to Sheikh Jarrah evictions. Data rights groups fear “discriminatory” algorithms are at work and demand greater transparency.
TRT world reported that Palestinians living in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood claimed by Jewish settlers have taken to social media to protest as they face eviction, but some found their posts, photos or videos removed or their entire accounts blocked started last week.
Advocacy advisor at the non-profit 7amleh said “On Instagram, it was mostly content takedown, even archives from older stories were deleted. On Twitter, most cases were an account suspension,”
However, In its defence of an attempt to internationally suppress voices, Instagram said in a statement that an automated update weeks ago caused content re-shared by multiple users to appear as missing, affecting posts on Sheikh Jarrah, Colombia, and US and Canadian indigenous communities. Even after Instagram claimed to have ‘fixed the problem’. Pages still complained of unjust censorship.