TikTok removes Quds News Network account without notice
Occupied Palestine (QNN)- TikTok removed the account of Quds News Newtwork, a Palestinian news outlet that shared posts about Israeli human rights violations and Arab normalization with Israeli occupation.
According to Hamzah al-Shobaki, who is responsible for managing the account on TikTok, the Chinese video-sharing app deleted Quds News Network account without any notice.
He said the account was deleted after it shared 1,200 posts about Arab normalization and Israeli occupation and had 50,000 followers, 7 million views and 350,000 likes.
In the same context, the head of Sada Social, Iyad Al Rifa’i, said Palestinians see TikTok as a space to escape from restrictions by American apps.
“Deleting the account of the Quds News Network is a new stage for Palestinian content on the platform,” he added.
This is not the first time in which the network faces such restrictions. Twitter administration also had restricted Quds News Network’s account twice. QNN’s first account on the platform, verified with the blue check mark, was permanently blocked in November 2019.
In December 1, QNN also said that it has been targeted by organized reports against its news posts on Facebook.
Palestinians are no strangers to such restrictions on social media.
For years, American apps, including Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp, have been deleting and deactivating the accounts of Palestinians in coordination with the Israeli government and security agencies, on the pretext of preventing Palestinian “incitement and hate speech” on its platform.
