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Meta is accused of having carried out one of the most extensive digital censorship operations of our time against Palestinian and pro‑Palestinian voices – and leaks suggest that this took place in close coordination with the Israeli authorities. At the same time, Arab artists and cultural communities are developing new strategies to circumvent the algorithms that attempt to reduce them to silence.

For the 7amleh - The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media

A digital censorship operation in the shadow of war
When the war between Israel and armed Palestinian groups escalated on 7 October 2023, Instagram and Facebook quickly became key arenas for documentation, mourning, and political mobilisation from Palestine. However, by December 2023, Human Rights Watch (HRW) had already concluded that Meta was systematically removing and restricting Palestine‑related content – even when it was peaceful and documentary in nature. HRW’s report “Meta’s Broken Promises” of 20 December 2023 documented over a thousand concrete cases of deleted posts, closed accounts, and hidden reach within a few weeks, without any real possibility of appeal for users.

Meta rejected the claim that this amounted to “systematic censorship”, explaining the extensive interventions as errors, technical problems, and strict enforcement of rules against hate, violence, and “Dangerous Organizations and Individuals” under exceptional pressure in wartime. The company stated that it follows both its own guidelines and national laws, and promised improvements through a dedicated human rights review of moderation in Israel/Palestine.

The leak: 94 percent yes to Israel
The conflict took a new turn in spring 2025, when leaked internal data from Meta were published by, among others, DropSite News and presented through the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. According to the leak, since October 2023 Meta had granted 94 percent of all content‑removal requests from the Israeli authorities, which is said to have resulted in over 90,000 posts being deleted immediately and tens of millions more being downranked algorithmically.

In a statement dated 1 June 2025, quoted by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, Meta argued that the portrayal of an “Israel‑led censorship campaign” provides a “misleading picture” of its practices. The company emphasised that it receives requests from many governments, that these are not automatically approved, and that a high approval rate does not in itself prove politically motivated censorship – but may reflect that many of the posts in question actually violated Meta’s rules against hate speech and violence. Critics, including HRW and the Palestinian digital rights organisation 7amleh, contend that the figures instead demonstrate extreme deference to Israeli demands, with global consequences for Palestinian and solidarity‑oriented voices.

“A global campaign to silence us”
In a report and statement published on 15 November 2025, 7amleh concludes that censorship of Palestinian content on Meta platforms is both systematic and global. The organisation describes how the leak aligns with testimonies from users in the region and the diaspora, who report deleted posts, closed accounts, and dramatically reduced reach as soon as they document abuses, criticise Israeli authorities, or express support for Palestinian resistance. According to 7amleh, this happens “in the midst of an ongoing catastrophe in Gaza”, where digital documentation is crucial for storytelling, accountability, and solidarity work.

Human Rights Watch reiterated its criticism of Meta in 2024 and 2025 in submissions to the company’s independent Oversight Board. HRW argues that Meta’s practices violate its own commitments to respect human rights, particularly the right to freedom of expression, when politically sensitive content from Palestinians is, in practice, suppressed far more harshly than content from other groups.

Arab artists: From censorship to counter‑strategies
The censorship has not only affected news journalism and activism. It has also directly hit the arts sector. In 7amleh’s report “Erased and Suppressed: Palestinian Testimonies of Meta’s Censorship”, published on 26 October 2025, Palestinian artists, filmmakers, and cultural workers describe how accounts and projects disappeared when they shared works and testimonies from Gaza and the West Bank. Several report that Meta’s restrictions made it impossible to reach audiences precisely at moments when art and documentation were a lifeline to the outside world.

The broader Arab art and cultural scene has also reacted strongly. International journals and platforms based in the region or its diaspora have linked Meta’s practices to a wider constriction of space for Palestine‑related art, both online and in physical institutions. Artists describe the sharing of poetry, music, and visual art about Palestine as an increasingly risky act, not only in relation to censors and concert organisers, but also in relation to the platforms’ automated systems.

“Lexical algorithmic resistance”: tricking the algorithm
The pressure has simultaneously triggered creative resistance. A peer‑reviewed study published on 9 June 2025 analyses how Arab users – including artists and activists – have developed what the researchers call “lexical algorithmic resistance”. Instead of mentioning Palestine, Gaza, or Hamas directly, they encode their messages through metaphors, alternative spellings, visual symbols, screenshots of text, or language‑mixing in order to evade automatic detection and content removal.

In parallel, artists and cultural collectives are building decentralised archives and closed digital spaces to store and circulate works that have been removed or are at risk of being removed. In a text published on 17 June 2025 on censorship and “social cohesion”, one artist describes how the work of rescuing and circulating censored art has itself become a political project: counteracting the “forced forgetting” that the platforms help to produce.

The battle over the narrative
Meta maintains that the company does not engage in politics, but enforces rules and laws, and rejects the idea that the leak proves a deliberate, discriminatory policy. Critics, however, argue that the high approval rate for Israeli takedown requests and the clear pattern in which voices are affected point to a structural bias that, in practice, excludes Palestinians and their supporters from the global digital public sphere.

Meanwhile, artists, journalists, and activists in Arab and Palestinian communities continue to seek new pathways through and around the platforms’ invisible barriers. It is a struggle over reach and visibility, but above all a struggle over the right to tell – and preserve – their own story at a time when algorithms play an ever more decisive role in defining what the world gets to see.

References:

Gaza War, Algorithms and Silenced Voices

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