By Maya Gebeily
May 21 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Conflict broke out this month between Israel and the southern Gaza Strip – and big tech has not been spared.
Instagram and Twitter have blamed technical errors for deleting posts mentioning the possible eviction of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, but data rights groups fear “discriminatory” algorithms are at work and want greater transparency.
Tensions first started in early May over the possible evictions of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood but soon escalated into a full-blown conflict between Gaza and Israel. A ceasefire announced overnight is set to put an end to fighting.
Can big tech stay neutral when conflicts erupt?
How have tech giants responded?
Facebook, Twitter, Google and Venmo all declined to comment on whether criticism over the Gaza-Israel conflict had prompted broader internal reviews of their content moderation processes or other policies.
But they have responded to individual criticism: on May 8, Instagram publicly apologised for the deletions of Sheikh Jarrah posts and suspensions of accounts.
This week, its parent company Facebook set up a round-the-clock “special operations center” to deal with content on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“It is staffed by experts from across the company, including native Arabic and Hebrew speakers,” a Facebook spokesman told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Facebook has established other “special operations centers” to deal with content on COVID-19, wildfires in California and Australia in recent years, violence in Myanmar, and major elections, including in the United States.
A Twitter spokeswoman said the company uses “a combination of technology and human review to enforce the Twitter Rules…impartially,” but did not specify whether it had created a dedicated team on the Gaza flare-up.
Following outrage on social media, YouTube recently deleted a video linked to the Israeli government that depicted rocket fire. A spokeswoman said the company uses automated systems to find content “at scale” while humans help with “contextual decisions” on removing content regardless of language.
