JAKARTA - Instagram and Facebook are highlighted because of the censorship they impose on the content of Israeli aggression against Palestinians. Worse, the censorship occurred because the platform attributed the hashtag "Al Aqsa" as one of the terrorist organizations. The platform manager explained that it happened because of an error in their content moderation system. Really?
It was previously reported that Instagram deleted the upload and blocked a hashtag related to Al Aqsa -- one of the holiest mosques for Muslims -- and associated it with a corporate designation for a terrorist organization. That's recognized as the latest content moderation error by Instagram and its parent company, Facebook.
BuzzFeed News obtained that information from an employee's internal communications. The mistake is said to have also provoked hubbub within Facebook. Many employees feel angry. Al Aqsa, since a few days ago, has been one of the starting points of violence by Israel. The mosque was even thrown by grenades and set on fire.
As a attention angler, Instagram users upload content with the hashtag #AlAqsa or #الاقصى or #الأقصى. Aware of a lot of missing content, users re-upload the content with the hashtag embedding above to see if Instagram actually deleted or hid their content.
As a result, some notifications show Instagram deleting those uploads with a notification that the content is related to a "violent or malicious organization". In one case, an employee noticed Instagram also deleted an infographic describing the Al Aqsa situation for the same reason.
"These two mistakes and many others are completely unacceptable," one Facebook employee wrote on the internal communications platform on Tuesday, May 11. "Al-Aqsa is the third holiest site in Islam and is a central aspect of the faith for some 1.8 billion people," the employee added.
Questioning Facebook's stance
Facebook's censorship of content about Al Aqsa occurred during tensions and extreme violence in the region. Many employees and observers criticized the failure of the content moderation as evidence of the lack of understanding of United States (U.S.) companies on the issue between Israelis and Palestinians.
The company that Mark Zuckerberg founded was asked to improve the system and apologized for the recklessness that had a big impact, considering its products are used by more than 3 billion people in the world. Facebook has previously told Middle Eastern news outlet The National that there was a mistake about Al Aqsha's fenced content.
Facebook also further clarified that the content was removed because Al Aqsa "is also the name of an organization sanctioned by the U.S. government." A Facebook spokesman declined to comment beyond communications on the company's internal platform. This censorship has not happened recently.
Last week, Instagram users in Palestine also complained about their Instagram Stories upload being deleted before 24 hours. Facebook at the time said the error was due to a bug. Last week's removal sparked criticism from Facebook's internal employees. Some employees conduct small reflections and investigations.
"Some of these incidents are human error and others are automated and I don't know which one is more common, but why decision makers can't use local expertise in regions (Middle East and North Africa) like Public Policy or Communications and consult with them before making a decision to remove sensitive hashtags or political content," one employee wrote.
The employee then shared a screenshot of the number of users complaining about censorship in their Instagram uploads. They also noted Instagram users around the world have started a campaign to rank poorly on the Instagram app on the Google Play Store.
Terrorism cap for Al Aqsa
Facebook Vice President of Integrity Guy Rosen wrote an explanation of the situation. He said Facebook had a team that "sorts and unblocks any issues that arise." Even so Guy explained that efforts did not prevent the removal of content about the Al Aqsa Mosque.
A Facebook employee criticized the stampede of terrorism for Al Aqsa. There are several organizations labeled as terrorist entities by the US and eu, such as the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade which is a Palestinian armed coalition in the West Bank. Or the Al Aqsa Foundation which is considered a support network of armed groups.
But that doesn't make sense to remove the content. "If there's a designated group called Washington troublemakers and uploads that only mention the word Washington will be removed, that's totally unacceptable."
"I really want to emphasize that this part of our user base already feels alienated and censored and after experiencing so many problems like this --be it technically based or product-- our users won't give the benefit of the doubt."
A Facebook spokesman who spoke to BuzzFeed News denied the allegations Facebook was being driven by the government. He said there was no such request. This happens because of human error. point. Ashraf Zeitoon, Facebook's Head of Policy for the Middle East and North Africa Region (2014-2017) was critical.
Facebook, he said, employs some of the world's top terrorism experts who can certainly distinguish the mention of Al-Aqsa from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Thus, the reason for human error is almost impossible. Zeitoon also called the removal of the content because Facebook was concerned that Israel's interests were being compromised.
"For them to go and identify one word from the name of two words associated with a terrorist organization is a weak reason... They are more qualified than this and more competent than this."
*Read more information about ISRAEL-PALESTINE or read other interesting writings of Yudhistira Mahabharata.
Other BERNAS
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
Related News
