The tip of the iceberg investigated how Facebook targets Palestinian content related to Israel.
Al Jazeera Arabic anchor Tamer Almisshal has had his Facebook profile deleted by Meta 24 hours after the Tip of the Iceberg program revealed an investigation into Meta’s censorship of Palestinian content. Space Locked.
During the program’s investigation, which aired on Friday, Eric Barbing, the former head of Israel’s cyber security apparatus, acknowledged his organization’s efforts to monitor Palestinian content based on criteria that included “liking” a photo of a Palestinian killed by Israeli forces.
The agency would then approach Facebook and argue that the content should be removed.
According to Barbing, Facebook usually complies with requests and Israel’s security apparatus follows up on cases, including bringing them to court if necessary.
The research followed up on Barbing’s confessions by interviewing a number of human rights and digital rights experts, who agreed that there was a significant imbalance in the way content was restricted in Palestine.
The program also interviewed Julie Owono, a member of Facebook’s supervisory board, who admitted that there is a discrepancy in the way the rules are interpreted and applied to Palestinian content, adding that recommendations have been sent to Facebook to correct this.
Al Jazeera asked Facebook why Almisshal’s profile was closed without prior warning or explanation. He had not received a reply at the time of publication.
“To a reporter”
Almisshal said the deleted profile is his personal page, created and verified by him in 2006. He had at least 700,000 followers there.
“After the great success of the episode, I realized that my personal Facebook profile had been deleted without explanation,” he told Al Jazeera. “It really seems like a kind of revenge for the program. We still haven’t received a response from Facebook.”
The program team set out to investigate the difference in how Facebook treats Palestinian and Israeli posts and material.
To do this, he created an experiment in which he built two different pages, one pro-Palestinian and the other Israeli, and tested them. The group concluded that there was considerable disagreement about how much scrutiny there is and how the rules apply to posts on both pages.
Palestinian Tamer Almisshal and a day later #reporter with #JazeeraMeta presented shocking evidence of censorship of Palestinian content on its platforms during the “Tip of the Iceberg” TV show, Facebook has taken down its page.#IsraeliCrimes #Palestine pic.twitter.com/RGQm8sUuzQ
– Hadeel Abo Aita (@aita_hadeel) September 10, 2023
It is unclear why Facebook would choose to delete an individual’s page in response to a program.
“There was no explanation, no warning,” Almisshal said. “Previously there were no problems with the content on my page. There are no messages saying that I violated any rules.”
Almisshal sticks to his program.
“In March of last year, Facebook restricted my account, and it has happened a few times, but usually the situation is resolved,” he said. “It was a strong journalistic project, and we communicated with Meta for this, giving us the opportunity to speak during the investigation.
“But targeting a reporter one-on-one, I never expected that.”
