Instagram users accuse the photo/video sharing platform of shadowbanning posts about Palestine amidst the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
However, Meta denied their claims; blaming the issue on a bug. Despite the company's explanation, numerous people still believe that the Palestine content shadowbanning is happening because of IG's history of inherent bias.
Instagram Shadowbans Palestine Content, Claim Users
Meta said that it is closely monitoring its platforms as terrorist attacks and Israel's violent counterattacks continue to escalate.
The giant tech firm said that it will check all content about Israel and Hamas for violations, saying that since the Israel-Hamas war is worsening, it could inadvertently flag some of these posts.
Meta clarified that it never intended to suppress any particular community or point-of-view about the Israel-Hamas conflict, as reported by TechCrunch.
However, the company said that since the United States and the European Union designated Hamas as a terrorist group, any content praising or supporting the militant organization is expressly forbidden on Instagram and other Meta-owned social media sites.
However, some users said that Instagram is still shadowbanning Palestine-related content, even if the post doesn't support the terrorist group.
This was experienced by Palestinian-American filmmaker Khitam Jabr, who said that some of her IG Reels travel vlogs were shadowbanned. She said that Meta could have restricted her Instagram account for 24 hours just because anti-Palestine users reported her.
Meta Blames IG Issue on a Bug
On Oct. 18, Meta claimed that the Instagram issue affecting Palestine-related content was caused by an in-app bug. The company said that it identified two bugs and was able to fix them in the past week.
One of these prevented users from going live on Facebook, saying that the bug affected many people across the world. The other in-app bug affected Instagram's Reels, Stories, and Feed posts.
Meta also said that the IG bug "affected accounts equally around the globe - not only people trying to post about what's happening in Israel and Gaza."
"It had nothing to do with the subject matter of the content. We fixed this bug as quickly as possible," added Meta via its official website.
To show that it isn't biased in any way, Meta even mentioned that it raised over $11.5 million for non-profit groups on Instagram and Facebook, which are helping victims of war in Israel and Palestine.
"This includes over 340,000 donations to 262 charities - providing disaster relief, ambulance and blood services, medical care and more," shared Meta.
