Alleged censorship of social media and disruptions to electricity and internet access have meant people under fire in Gaza can’t get the information they need to survive.

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Palestinians Claim Social Media 'Censorship' Is Endangering Lives | WIRED
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Palestinians Claim Social Media
‘Censorship’ Is Endangering Lives
Alleged censorship of social media and disruptions
to electricity and internet access have meant people
under fire in Gaza can’t get the information they
need to survive.
Lila Hassan Oct 21, 2023 2:00 AM
An explosion in Gaza City on October 12, 2023.Photograph: MAHMUD HAMS/Getty Images
When Israel issued an evacuation order from north Gaza on October 13,
Shouq Al-Najjar left her house and headed south, to the city of Khan
Younis, where she’s now sharing a home with 150 relatives and friends.
Every day is a struggle for the basics. “Now bakeries are stretched to the
limit. They cannot meet the demand for bread,” she said in a video
message over WhatsApp. “Hospitals could stop working at any hour now,
as there is no electricity and no fuel to power generators.”
A ground invasion of Gaza is thought to be imminent. Al-Najjar, a
coordinator at Ma’an Development Centre, a nonprofit that works with
other local community organizations on Gaza’s humanitarian and
economic development, says there are no more shelters to go to. Local
health and aid workers are warning of an impending humanitarian crisis.
Services are collapsing The last remaining power station ran out of fuel on
October 11, just three days after a near-total blockade began. On October
17, the Health Ministry in Gaza asked people to bring their remaining
personal stashes of fuel to pump generators at hospitals and keep them
running. Fresh drinking water has run out, according to the UN Refugee
Agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, leaving people to drink dirty well water.

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With the situation on the ground constantly in flux, social media is a
lifeline. People stay informed via a patchwork of videos, text posts, and
voice notes, along with official statements from government agencies. But
getting information within Gaza, and getting information out of Gaza, has
become increasingly difficult. Internet and electricity services have been
disrupted by attacks. Last Friday, Israel vowed to cut Gaza’s access to the
internet. Since then, services have been intermittent. Exacerbating this,
Palestinians and their supporters allege that social media platforms—
particularly Instagram, which is a critical communications tool in Gaza—
are “shadow-banning” their content—algorithmically deprioritizing it so it’s
harder to find, or actively over-moderating it. Instagram’s owner, Meta,
denies this is happening, calling the issues “a glitch," but this alleged
phenomenon has been documented for years. These information
blackouts could deepen the suffering of those fleeing the fighting, or in
the firing line.
“It makes it even hard to get in touch with loved ones, to get critical
information about where to find medicine, food, safe passage, which are
all critically limited,” says Deborah Brown, a senior researcher and
advocate on digital rights at campaign group Human Rights Watch. “It also
seriously hinders the ability of journalists and human rights monitors to
document mounting abuses.”
On social media, shadow-banning is hard to prove. But users across the
world say any posts containing Palestinian content, or mentions of Gaza,
get atypically low views and engagement. In some cases, Instagram users
weren’t allowed to comment on other posts, with a pop-up message that
read, “We restrict certain activity to protect our community. Based on your
use, this action will be unavailable for you until [date]. Tell us if you think
we made a mistake.”
Meta didn’t respond to a request for comment.
On Sunday, Molly Crabapple, an artist and author based in New York,

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shared a post from the news television show, Democracy Now!, covering
Israel’s distribution of weapons to settlers in the West Bank. Within a day
she received a notice that read, “Your account can’t be shown to non-
followers.” The notice said her account wouldn’t appear in explore, search,
suggested user, reels, or feed recommendations. “It's a dangerous
attempt to stifle information,” Crabapple says.
Some users have begun posting tips and tricks on how to circumvent
moderation: add stickers, polls, use symbols instead of letters (p@le$tine,
for example), and even hashtags that read #IStandWithIsrael.
On October 19, Instagram apologized for inserting the word “terrorist” into
automatically translated bios of Palestinian users. Meta was previously
accused of shadow-banning Palestinian voices in 2021, during violent
clashes between police and Palestinian protesters. An independent report
later found that the platform had over-moderated content in Arabic, and
under-moderated content in Hebrew.
Mona Shtaya, a fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy
specializing in digital rights, who is based in the West Bank, says that
while this phenomenon isn’t new, it becomes a particularly acute issue
during moments of increased tension. “This ‘technical glitch’ is only
happening when there are escalations in Palestine,” she says. “There is a
huge censorship of Palestinian content.”
With access to information patchy and unreliable, misinformation spreads
and people are liable to moments of panic, Shtaya says. A few days ago,
rumors spread of an impending total blackout, leaving many fearing they’d
be unable to reach family abroad, or to make appeals for help, making an
already exhausting, intensely stressful situation even worse.
While the blackouts and alleged blocking of accounts hampers
humanitarian work in Gaza, they are also preventing Gazans from showing
the world what’s happening on the ground. The death toll in Gaza has now

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surpassed 4,200 people, with over 1 million people displaced, according
to the UN Office of High Commissioner. The NGOs Human Rights Watch
and Amnesty International allege that Israel has deployed white
phosphorus, whose use is forbidden in heavily populated areas under
international humanitarian law. But with the information flow disrupted, it’s
hard for people outside of Gaza to document potential war crimes and
human rights violations.
Laura Albast, senior editor of digital strategy at the Institute for Palestine
Studies, said collecting firsthand accounts and documenting live updates
is essential to their work. “Social media makes this possible for me,” she
says. “Unfortunately, because a lot of researchers, journalists, and families
are relying on social media to document and check in, we have put our
faith in the hands of big tech conglomerates.”
Ahmed Al-Sammak, a freelance journalist who left Gaza a few months ago
to pursue a master’s degree in Dublin, Ireland, says it’s becoming
incredibly difficult to get news from remote areas of Gaza, which aren’t
being covered by the media. He has to rely on Instagram and WhatsApp to
find out what’s happening. “The regular citizen is my main source of
information now,” Al-Sammak says. “My parents don’t have internet, so if
there’s a strong air strike near them, I won’t know from news agencies.”
With the electricity down for well over a week, his parents have to go
outside and find any makeshift energy source—a truck, car, or outlets
powered by solar panels. Yesterday, Al-Sammak tried reaching his parents
but couldn’t for over two hours. “Can you imagine calling your parents and
you can’t reach them?” he says.
As Gaza starts to go dark, people have been posting farewells to
Instagram, writing their own obituaries so that people have something to
remember them by. They mention hunger, thirst, and being unsure of
when they will next be able to speak to the outside world. “I feel lucky to
make it to another day,” said Bayan Abusultan, an independent journalist in

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Gaza, in one of her many videos describing developments and showing
scenes of the aftermath of strikes from her account BayanPalestine. “We
spend our days terrified of the nights, and we spend the night wondering
if we’re going to survive to see another sunrise.”