The BBCFacebook has severely limited the ability of Palestinian news outlets to reach audiences during the Israel-Gaza war, according to BBC research.
In a comprehensive analysis of Facebook data, we found that newsrooms in the Palestinian territories – Gaza and the West Bank – experienced a sharp decline in audience engagement since October 2023.
The BBC has also seen leaked documents showing Instagram – another Meta-owned platform – extending its moderation of Palestinian user comments after October 2023.
Meta – Facebook’s owner – says any implication that it deliberately suppresses certain voices is “unequivocally false”.
Since the start of the Israel-Gaza war, only a few foreign journalists have been allowed to enter the Palestinian coastal strip of Gaza from the outside, and they have only been able to do so with the help of the Israeli military.
Social media has filled the void for those wanting to hear more voices from inside Gaza. The Facebook pages of news outlets such as Palestine TV, Wafa News Agency and Palestine Al-Watan News – which operate from the West Bank – became an important source of updates for many around the world.
BBC News Arabic compiled engagement data on the Facebook pages of 20 prominent Palestinian news outlets in the year leading up to the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, and the year since.
Engagement is an important measure of how much influence a social media account is having and how many people are viewing its content. This includes factors like the number of comments, reactions and shares.
During the war period, audience engagement can be expected to increase. However, after the attacks by Hamas on October 7, 2023, the figure saw a 77 percent drop.
Palestine TV has 5.8 million followers on Facebook. Journalists in the newsroom shared with us statistics showing a 60% drop in the number of people viewing their posts.
“Relationships were completely restricted, and our posts stopped reaching people,” says Tariq Ziyad, a journalist at the channel.
Over the past year, Palestinian journalists have expressed concern that their online content is being “shadow-banned” by Meta — in other words, restricted by how many people see it.
To test this, we analyzed the same data on the Facebook pages of 20 Israeli news organizations such as Yediot Ahronot, Israel Hayom and Channel 13. A large amount of war-related content was also posted on these pages, but their audience engagement increased. About 37 percent.
Meta has previously been accused by Palestinians and human rights groups. Failing to fairly moderate online activity.
An independent report commissioned by the company in 2021 said this was not intentional, but due to a lack of Arabic-speaking skills among moderators. Words and phrases were being interpreted as offensive or violent, when in fact they were harmless.
For example, the Arabic phrase “alhamdullah”, meaning “praise be to God”, was sometimes automatically translated as “praise be to God, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom”.
To see if this explains the decline in engagement with Palestinian institutions, the BBC conducted a similar analysis on the Facebook pages of 30 prominent Arabic-language news sources, including Sky News Arabia and There are other places like Al Jazeera.
However, these pages saw an average increase in engagement of almost 100%.
Responding to our inquiry, Metta pointed out that it had made no secret of the “temporary product and policy measures” it had taken in October 2023.
It said it faced a challenge to balance the right to freedom of expression, with the fact that Hamas was sanctioned by the United States and designated as a dangerous organization under META’s own policies. .
The tech giant also said that pages that post exclusively about war are more likely to see engagement.
“We recognize that we make mistakes, but any implication that we deliberately suppress a particular voice is patently false,” a spokesperson said.
Leaked Instagram documents
The BBC also spoke to five former and current Meta employees about how their company’s policies have affected individual Palestinian customers.
One person, who spoke anonymously, shared leaked internal documents about a change Instagram made to its algorithm, which tightened moderation of Palestinians commenting on Instagram posts.
“Within a week of the Hamas attack, the code was fundamentally changed, making it more aggressive against the Palestinian people,” he said.
Internal messages show that an engineer expressed concern about the order, fearing that it could “introduce a new bias into the system against Palestinian customers”.
Meta confirmed it took the action but said it was necessary to respond to “an increase in hateful material” coming out of the Palestinian territories.
It said policy changes that had been made at the start of the Israel-Gaza war had now been reversed, but did not say when.
At least 137 Palestinian journalists have been reported killed in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict, but few continue despite the threats.
Getty Images“A lot of information cannot be published because it is too graphic – for example if [Israeli] The army massacres and we film it, the video won’t spread,” says Omar al-Qata, one of the few photojournalists who chose to stay in northern Gaza.
“But despite the challenges, the dangers and the content ban,” he says, “we must continue to share Palestinian content.”
Additional reporting by Rihab Ismail and Natalie Merzogi