NYU research: Social media algorithms biased against Palestine

New York (QNN)- A new research by NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights stated that social media algorithms are biased against the Palestinian narrative.

The research titled “How social media fuels U.S. political polarization — what to do about it” and written by Paul Barrett, Justin Hendrix, and Grant Sims, revealed that in response to a surge of fake news on the tension between the resistant and the occupation state last May, Facebook established a “special operations center” in the occupation state staffed with native Arabic and Hebrew speakers tasked with monitoring for rule-violating content and restoring posts that had been improperly removed
by automated systems.

“Facebook and Twitter eventually acknowledged that they had wrongly blocked or restricted millions of mostly pro-Palestinian posts and accounts, in some cases because content-removal algorithms interpreted words like “martyr” and “resistance”
as signaling calls to violence”, the researchers noted.

The researchers also recommended that social media platforms should strengthen engagement with civil society groups, taking into consideration to carefully assess the agendas and relative capabilities of those offering assistance.

In this regard, the research added that “many Palestinians have experienced an
unjustified degree of censorship on social media because the Israeli government has a proficient cyber unit that flags large quantities of allegedly hateful and violent Palestinian content. The Palestinians lack comparable capacity.”