Meta responds to concerns about Israel-Hamas war misinformation, saying the company formed an operations center, removed 795K+ posts, and more
I wouldn't call it censorship, it's always an algorithm which controls the content you see on IG and others. But since algorithms something like the secret recipe of Coke, nobody get it if someone put some secret ingredients in it. Taylor Lorenz / @taylorlorenz@mastodon.social : Ameer (the journalist who runs the IG account @muslim and @muslimnews on IG) shows the massive drop in reach he's had on IG since he started covering news about the war in Israel from a Palestinian Muslim perspective. — His page can be found here if you're interested in looking at what he's been sharing: https://instagram.com/muslim … Bluesky: Kyle Orland / @kyleorl.bsky.social : It's never not gonna be weird to me that this is the company that makes the headset I play Beat Saber on. — It's like if Nintendo acted as a major news editor/publisher. [embedded post] X: Senator Marco Rubio / @senmarcorubio : There is no hiding the brutality and savagery of Hamas. Big Tech cannot censor the truth of what Hamas did in Israel. [video] Mario Nawfal / @marionawfal : 🚨JUST IN: Looks like Quds News in Gaza has had its Facebook Page removed. Source: Aurora [image] @business : Meta has removed or marked more than 795,000 pieces of disturbing content for violating their policies in Arabic and Hebrew after it was rebuked by the EU https://www.bloomberg.com/... @auroraintel : Looks like Quds News in Gaza has had its Facebook Page removed. [image] @thefatgoalie : Facebook and Instagram are going to extreme measures to protect Israel. Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most evil people on this planet. On Facebook I used to get constantly banned. You could simply say “Israel was hit with a missile” and get banned for terrorism. LinkedIn: Tom Bonsundy-O'Bryan : Since the terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel on Saturday, and Israel's response in Gaza, expert teams from across our company have been working around … Jake Kennedy : Our team has been working around the clock to remove violating and misleading content related to the Israel-Hamas War while ensuring … Ori Modai : The past week has been the hardest our region of the world has ever seen, bringing a flood of hate speech, incitement content, and malicious reactions on all social media channels. …
EngadgetSarah Fielding
Context & Ripple Effects
Meta’s response follows an EU call for greater vigilance over conflict-related disinformation and its own prior account of new restrictions and a dedicated response team. The significance is not only the volume of enforcement, but the simultaneous challenge from users and journalists who say Palestinian-perspective coverage lost distribution.
Later coverage of gaps in Arabic-language moderation and internal friction suggests that scaling enforcement during a fast-moving conflict does not resolve questions about accuracy, consistency, or visibility.
First-order effects
Meta has centralized its immediate conflict-response effort and says it has removed or labeled more than 795,000 policy-violating posts in Arabic and Hebrew, affecting the availability of war-related content on Facebook and Instagram.
Users and publishers reporting reduced reach—particularly for Palestinian-perspective coverage—face a more consequential moderation and ranking environment even where content is not formally removed.
Second-order effects
Regulatory scrutiny shifts from whether Meta has acted to whether its enforcement is even-handed and explainable, especially after the earlier EU intervention.
The combination of mass removals and reach complaints raises the operational cost of moderation: Meta must distinguish harmful material from legitimate reporting across languages and dialects while handling appeals and error reports.
Third-order effects
If this pattern persists, conflict moderation will be judged as much by distribution systems and redress mechanisms as by removal totals; transparency around ranking and reinstatement becomes part of platform governance.
The later escalation to expedited Oversight Board cases points toward more formal review of wartime enforcement decisions, though it cannot by itself solve language- and context-specific moderation limits.
The trend: Major platforms are moving toward standing crisis-response systems, while pressure grows to make both content removals and algorithmic distribution accountable during conflicts.
This discussion will always come back to the question of whether these places are public utilities or corporate products. The answer today is corporate products. So when it comes to distribution of news... it is what it is. That said, Meta's continued focus on news distributio…
Identifying and eliminating “mis-and dis-info” may be difficult, but it's doable. The EU even has a law stating posts that incite violence via manipulated media and propaganda must be removed. That's a great place to start. The fact that it's tough doesn't mean it shouldn't be…
“mis-and dis-info” as decided by whom? the solutions and steps you listed will do nothing to curb the downsides of prioritising news on social media, evident by how great the coverage of Palestine/Israel is going on X-bird. as always, the problem with this here technology …
Threads doesn't need to ‘promote’ news, nor should it ‘demote’ news as it's doing now with COVID searches. It must remove mis- and dis-info masquerading as news. All Threads needs to do is give users better tools to manage their consumption of news and allow them to promote it …
I'd like to better understand the point you guys are making. I remember the bait & switch Meta pulled on Facebook but I don't fully understand what your prescription is for Threads. For example, if Threads had a trending tab over the last weekend, would you expect the terrorist…
One of the issues isn't just incentives as @ezraklein mentions, but also the definition of news. To use an analogy I am smitten with (🗞️) - a lot of platforms started defining news as the A section of the paper. When news has always been “what you talk to your neighbor about.” …
News and social media don't mix. Threads would have much better engagement if it promoted news. But there would be consequences. Meta isn't falling into that trap. And the news industry shouldn't encourage it.
This was bound to happen eventually. But the way Twitter's algorithm pushes news at the expense of spreading misinformation means Meta's news stance on Threads is working. People that are actively seeking out information will get it, but it isn't pushed around like crazy. …
I think the idea is neither promote or suppress news. Only time will tell how well Threads manages the influx of news articles, misinformation, and disinformation.
Ameer (the journalist who runs the IG account @muslim and @muslimnews on IG) shows the massive drop in reach he's had on IG since he started covering news about the war in Israel from a Palestinian Muslim perspective. — His page can be found here if you're interested in looking…
It's never not gonna be weird to me that this is the company that makes the headset I play Beat Saber on. — It's like if Nintendo acted as a major news editor/publisher. [embedded post]
Meta has removed or marked more than 795,000 pieces of disturbing content for violating their policies in Arabic and Hebrew after it was rebuked by the EU https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Facebook and Instagram are going to extreme measures to protect Israel. Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most evil people on this planet. On Facebook I used to get constantly banned. You could simply say “Israel was hit with a missile” and get banned for terrorism.