Thousands take part in online campaign demanding Twitter to stop censoring Palestinian content
Occupied Palestine (QNN)- Thousands of activists around the world took part in a campaign against Twitter’s censorship of Palestinian content.
Activists said the Twitter administration is being biased towards the occupation state and against Palestine.
The campaign comes after several accounts, including news accounts such as QNN’s, noticed that Twitter started marking pro-Palestine content as ‘sensitive.
By making Palestinian content "sensitive" you are effectively goading israeli perpetrators to be even more brutal #TwitterCensorsPalestine pic.twitter.com/z482GHArjH
— Sarah Wilkinson (@swilkinsonbc) October 2, 2021
"Every post, tweet, video makes a difference" — @kurd_muna #TwitterCensorsPalestine pic.twitter.com/DtdB6aDTRz
— Asa Winstanley (@AsaWinstanley) October 2, 2021
It is our turn to raise our voices against this injustice and bias with the occupying state of 'Israel'.
Your voice makes a difference!
Join our Twitter campaign using hashtag
#TwitterCensorsPalestine pic.twitter.com/JkyNWxtMwq— روان (@User2021987) October 1, 2021
Twitter appears to follow dictates from US authorities to silence officially designated enemies in other countries. #TwitterCensorsPalestine https://t.co/0Pe2yNheoc
— Joe Catron (@jncatron) October 2, 2021
Twitter suspension of Palestinian accounts is a “blatant violation” that aims to suppress the Palestinian content and hide a narrative that exposes the real face of the Israeli occupation.
#TwitterCensorsPalestine 🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/6leRNx94Dk
— Lujain ^_^ (@Me1Lujain) October 2, 2021
Hiding the Palestinian news content under the 'sensitive material' label serves only the Israeli wishes to silence the Palestinians' voices.#TwitterCensorsPalestine pic.twitter.com/jEDds1lIdg
— Kuffiya (@Kuffiya3) October 2, 2021
QNN contacted the Twitter administration, which in turn denied it all. Commenting on Twitter’s denial, the member of QNN’s administration board, Nisreen Al Khatib, said that the social media platform “has previously tried to bend the truth and shrink from accountability when it claimed that suspending three pages belonging to QNN was a technical error”.
“The news pages remained suspended for nearly a hear without providing any reasons or responding to our messages. It said at the time that the suspension was upon a special request by the Israeli occupation government”, Al Khatib added.
She added that “QNN does not rule out the possibility that Twitter’s move against its content comes in compliance with an Israeli request. We believe that it [Twitter] is following indirect ways to impose restrictions on users’ access to Palestine news through marking it as sensitive content.”
Not only QNN’s English account that has been targeted by Twitter. Accounts of hundreds of news institutions and activists were targeted as well.
Sarah Wilkinson, a well-known pro-Palestine activist, said that Twitter claimed that she has enabled a feature, which makes her content be marked as sensitive.
“Twitter are accusing me of disabling my sensitive content viewing”, Wilkinson said, commenting on a reply by Twitter on the issue.
“This isn’t true… I only have one account, on one device, so it’s impossible for me to have disable [ed] or enabled anything from a different device.”
This is not the first time for Twitter to follow such behavior. Last May, during the Israeli crackdown on Palestinians in Gaza, Jerusalem, West Bank, and the 1948-occupied territories, Twitter and Instagram removed and suspended hundreds of accounts, which showed solidarity. A few days later, both platforms claimed that it was a technical error, which caused the mass removals.
