Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Thursday wrote a letter to Meta Platforms Inc.’s META CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, demanding to know details of how the company is moderating content around the Israel-Hamas conflict and if it has implemented the recommendations in the Business for Social Responsibility or BSR report.
What Happened: In the letter to Zuckerberg, first noted on Endgadget, Warren expressed concern about how Meta might be suppressing, filtering, and mistranslating what people see about Palestine on Instagram.
She said more than 90 human rights and civil society organizations have raised alarm about the same and have called for tech giants to be more transparent about “content moderation” and address “discriminatory algorithmic design.”
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Warren said that following the Oct. 7 attack, Meta has reportedly restricted Palestinian-related content, labeling the Palestinian flag emoji as “potentially offensive.”
Adding that it “translated user bios that contained the Palestinian flag emoji and the words ‘Palestinian’ and ‘Alhamdulilah’ as ‘Palestinian terrorist’ or ‘praise be to God, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom.'”
She also said that several Instagrammers have also reported that the platform might be “shadowbanning material” related to Palestine.
The letter concludes by demanding that Meta disclose specific details about how it applies the company policies during this ongoing war by Jan. 5. It intends to know how many posts were removed since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and how many were appealed against.
Why It’s Important: Social media platforms like Meta’s Instagram, Facebook, and Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) have been under scrutiny for not adequately moderating content on their respective platforms.
In October, it was reported that in the three days following the Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Meta had removed more than 795,000 posts breaching its content guidelines. This removal happened after the EU warned social media companies about the propagation of disinformation on the platforms.
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