Instagram Account For Pro-Palestinians Locked By Meta

(CTN News) – Meta has locked pro-Palestinian Instagram accounts following what the Facebook owner described as suspected security breaches.

The popular Instagram account @eye.on.palestine, which has more than 6 million followers, has been unavailable since Wednesday night. There was also no access to the backup account. At lunchtime on Thursday, both accounts remained unavailable.

It’s one of the top Instagram accounts dedicated to sharing Palestinian experiences under Israel’s bombardment, regularly posting pictures and videos.

This is not the first time that the account has been banned. In the past year, the account was temporarily suspended due to “non-compliance” with community guidelines; however, the account was reinstated later in the year.

According to Meta, “These accounts were initially locked for security reasons after signs of compromise and we are trying to contact the account owners to ensure that they are able to access their accounts.”

Recently, Meta and pro-Palestinian posts and accounts were suspended following a number of issues.

Due to a bug, Instagram Account added the label “terrorist” to some Palestinian profiles last week. As a result, users translated bios that read “Palestinian” written in English, the Palestinian flag emoji, and alhamdulillah written in Arabic, which were automatically translated into English and read “Praise be to God, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom.”

Instagram Account has resolved the issue.

A spokesperson for Meta told Guardian Australia that the issue had been resolved earlier this week. The auto-translation now reads: “Thank God.”

We have resolved a problem that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations in some of our products. The spokesperson apologized sincerely for the incident.

In recent weeks, Instagram Account users have also claimed the platform has censored and shadow-banned posts supporting Palestine. Users have shared examples of stories about Palestine receiving significantly fewer viewers, or accounts of users who share pro-Palestinian content being inaccessible to search engines.

As a result of Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2021, the platform was heavily criticised and accused of censorship and bias, and last year an internal study concluded that during the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip in May 2021, Facebook and Instagram’s speech policies violated the fundamental human rights of Palestinian users.

According to Meta, “These accounts were initially locked for security reasons after signs of compromise and we are trying to contact the account owners to ensure that they are able to access their accounts.”

It follows a number of issues related to Meta and pro-Palestinian posts and accounts that led to the recent suspension.

Due to a bug, Instagram added the label “terrorist” to some Palestinian profiles last week. Users translated bios that had the word “Palestinian” written in English, the Palestinian flag emoji and the Arabic word alhamdulillah automatically into English as follows: “Praise be to God, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom.”

The issue has been resolved by Instagram Account. According to a spokesperson for Meta, the auto-translation now reads: “Thank God.”

We have resolved a problem that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations in some of our products. Our sincere apologies for this incident,” the spokesperson said.

In recent weeks, Instagram users have also claimed the platform censored and shadowbanned posts supporting Palestine. Some users have reported stories about Palestine getting significantly fewer views, or users being unable to search for pro-Palestinian content.

As a result of Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2021, the platform was heavily criticised and accused of censorship and bias, and the platform’s speech policies violated the fundamental human rights of Palestinians during the Israeli attacks on Gaza Strip in May 2021, according to an internal study published last year.

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