American business magnate, Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Meta will begin to block all pro Hamas post across its platform.
Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp.
On Saturday October 7, 2023, the Palestinian militant groups led by Hamas launched a large-scale invasion and offensive against Israel from the Gaza Strip, with Hamas taking scores of Israeli and foreign hostages to Gaza.
Meta on its website on Friday said between October 7 and 10, it has removed over 795,000 Hebrew and Arabic disturbing content on all its platforms, while noting that initial threat by Hamas to broadcast live footage of hostages will be removed.
“Given the higher volumes of content being reported to us, we know content that doesn’t violate our policies may be removed in error. To mitigate this, for some violations we are temporarily removing content without strikes, meaning these content removals won’t cause accounts to be disabled” Meta said.
Speaking further Meta said, “Hamas is banned from our platforms, and we remove praise and substantive support of them when we become aware of it while continuing to allow social and political discourse — such as news reporting, human rights-related issues, or academic, neutral and condemning discussion.
“We want to reiterate that our policies are designed to give everyone a voice while keeping people safe on our apps. We apply these policies regardless of who is posting or their personal beliefs, and it is never our intention to suppress a particular community or point of view.
“We will also continue to provide tools for users to appeal our decisions if they think we made a mistake.”
Meta also reiterated that members of its teams are monitoring the situation and, in some cases, temporarily introducing limited, proportionate, and time-bound measures to address specific, emerging risks.