50 violations against Palestinian content during August 2021, says NGO
Occupied Palestine (QNN)- Sada Social Center, a Palestinian digital rights organisation specializes in protecting Palestinian narratives on social media platforms, documented almost 50 violations and restrictions against Palestinian content during August 2021.
Sada Social said that these violations and restrictions were distributed among the majority of global social media platforms and mainly affected the content and accounts that dealt with the Palestinian situation and the ongoing violations of the Israeli occupation.
The Center said that these restrictions also affected the Palestinian accounts that covered the recent situations in Afghanistan, adding that words like Kabul, Afghanistan or Taliban were enough to delete the content.
These restriction also extended to include some kind of penalties for Palestinian media pages that were subjected to the removal of content and publications they submitted about Afghanistan, the Center said, saying it received several complaints from people whose accounts on Facebook were subjected to being banned from publishing because of their use of these terms.
Sada Social Center also denounced the accession of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Refugees (UNRWA) to the pursuit of Palestinian digital content, and the restriction of freedom of expression, through its threat to dismiss a number of its employees in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Syria and Lebanon, based on complaints submitted by the Zionist Organization, UN Watch, a step which the Center considered “a succumb to pressure and the organized Israeli campaign against Palestinian content.”
The Center also recorded that the Twitter administration resorted to restricting and prosecuting accounts of international activists who provided content supportive of Palestinian rights, which considered aligning with the Israeli narrative and pressure to prevent any narrative that supports the Palestinian rights, and a continuation of the policy of double standards.
The violations also varied between the complete ban and suspension of some features, the complete closure of accounts or pages, or the restriction of publications or lives and lowering reach levels.
In 2020 only, the Center documented 1200 violations against Palestinian content, including 25 on Instagram, 10 on YouTube, 801 on Facebook, and 276 on Twitter.
It is noteworthy that Sada Social Center is a voluntary youth initiative launched in 2017 to protect Palestinian digital content.
