Buongiorno,

siccome l'ha detto la BBC _sicuramente_ ora lo sanno tutti quindi la mia
segnalazione dovrebbe essere inutile, comunque:

«How Facebook restricted news in Palestinian territories»
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c786wlxz4jgo

by Ahmed Nour, Joe Tidy and Yara Farag, Dec. 18 2024

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---

In a comprehensive analysis of Facebook data, we found that newsrooms
in the Palestinian territories - in Gaza and the West Bank - had
suffered a steep drop in audience engagement since October 2023.

The BBC has also seen leaked documents showing that Instagram -
another Meta-owned platform - increased its moderation of Palestinian
user comments after October 2023.

[...]

Since the beginning of the Israel-Gaza war, just a few outside
reporters have been allowed to enter the Palestinian coastal territory
of Gaza from the outside, and they were only able to do so escorted by
the Israeli army.

Social media has filled the gap for those wanting to hear more voices
from inside Gaza. Facebook pages for news outlets such as Palestine
TV, Wafa news agency and Palestinian Wattan News - which operate out
of the West Bank territory - became a vital source of updates for many
around the world.

[...]

During a period of war, audience engagement might be expected to
rise. However, the data showed a 77% decline after the Hamas attacks
on 7 October 2023.

Palestine TV has 5.8 million followers on Facebook. Journalists at the
newsroom shared statistics with us showing a 60% drop in the number of
people seeing their posts.

[...]

Over the past year, Palestinian journalists have raised fears that
their online content is being "shadow-banned" by Meta - in other
words, restricted in how many people see it.

To test this, we carried out the same data analysis on the Facebook
pages of 20 Israeli news organisations such as Yediot Ahronot, Israel
Hayom and Channel 13. These pages also posted a large amount of
war-related content, but their audience engagement increased by nearly
37%.

Meta has previously been accused by Palestinians and human rights
groups of [failing to moderate online activity fairly].

An independent report in 2021 commissioned by the company said this
was not deliberate but because of a lack of Arabic-speaking expertise
among moderators. Words and phrases were being interpreted as
offensive or violent, when they were in fact innocuous.

For example, the Arabic phrase "Alhamdulillah", which means "Praise be
to God", was sometimes being auto-translated as "Praise be to God,
Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom".

To see if this explained the decline in engagement with Palestinian
outlets, the BBC carried out the same analysis on Facebook pages for
30 prominent Arabic-language news sources based elsewhere, such as Sky
News Arabia and Al-Jazeera.

However, these pages saw an average increase in engagement of nearly
100%.

Responding to our research, Meta pointed out that it had made no
secret of "temporary product and policy measures" taken in October
2023.

It said it had faced a challenge balancing the right to freedom of
speech, with the fact that Hamas was both US-sanctioned and designated
as a dangerous organisation under Meta's own policies.

The tech giant also said that pages posting exclusively about the war
were more likely to see engagement impacted.

"We acknowledge we make mistakes, but any implication that we
deliberately suppress a particular voice is unequivocally false," a
spokesperson said.

[failing to moderate online activity fairly]
<https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and%20https://www.bsr.org/en/reports/meta-human-rights-israel-palestine>

Leaked Instagram documents
───────────────────────────

The BBC has also spoken to five former and current employees of Meta
about the impact they say their company's policies have had on
individual Palestinian users.

One person, who spoke anonymously, shared leaked internal documents
about a change made to Instagram's algorithm, which toughened the
moderation of Palestinians commenting on Instagram posts.

"Within a week of the Hamas attack, the code was changed essentially
making it more aggressive towards Palestinian people," he said.

Internal messages show that an engineer raised concerns about the
order, worried that it could be "introducing a new bias into the
system against Palestinian users".

Meta confirmed it took the measure but said it had been necessary to
respond to what it called a "spike in hateful content" coming out of
the Palestinian territories.

It said that policy changes put in place at the start of the
Israel-Gaza war had now been reversed, but did not say when this
happened.

[...]

"A lot of information can't be published as it is too graphic - for
example if the [Israeli] army commits a massacre and we film it, the
video won't spread," says Omar el Qataa, one of the few
photojournalists who chose to stay in northern Gaza.

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«Non è colpa nostra, siamo solo incompetenti nelle traduzioni
dall'arabo».

Saluti, 380°

-- 
380° (Giovanni Biscuolo public alter ego)

«Noi, incompetenti come siamo,
 non abbiamo alcun titolo per suggerire alcunché»

Disinformation flourishes because many people care deeply about injustice
but very few check the facts.  Ask me about <https://stallmansupport.org>.

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