The Sada Social Center for Palestinian Digital Rights issued its annual report documenting violations against Palestinian content in the digital space, presenting the highlights of the report during a press conference held on Monday in Ramallah.
During the conference, which was held at the “Lammet Press” center, and witnessed the attendance of Palestinian journalists and media outlets, the center indicated that the year 2022 represented an extension of the efforts of the siege of Palestine in the digital space, and an increase in the identification of social networking sites with the policies of the occupation and their compliance with its standards. The center also indicated that the indicator The most dangerous thing this year is the tendency of digital technology companies to provide services to the security institutions of the occupation, which they use to suppress and spy on the Palestinians.
The Sada Social Center stated that it documented, among the violations of social media sites during the past year 2022, more than 1,230 violations against digital and Palestinian content, and the largest party in the outcome of the practice of violations against Palestinian content was the Meta company with its Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms. The complaints documented by the center included 805 violations on the Facebook platform, Instagram: 165 WhatsApp: 96 Twitter: 68 TikTok: 52 YouTube: 26 Club House: 11 violations Telegram: 6 violations and one violation on SoundCloud.
These violations included closing and deleting accounts and pages, banning posting, live broadcasting, advertising, removing content, restricting access and follow-up, imposing restrictions on publishing, banning numbers, and deleting groups on chat platforms such as WhatsApp.
The center referred to the continuous targeting of Palestinian journalists, especially that 58% of the violations were against journalists and media institutions. For accounts that publish their content from within historic Palestine.
As for the type of content that was violated, the content published in the form of text was the highest in terms of violations, with 33% of all violations, followed by images 29%, videos 18%, and nearly 1% for both live broadcasts and comments.
The Meta administration also continued to include Palestinian terms in the ban lists included in the algorithms, as these lists contained Palestinian national names and symbols, historical figures, political parties, and civil associations and institutions active in solidarity with the Palestinian people, which were described in the lists of terrorism, which are still approved. And effective despite the massive protest by users and many human rights organizations and parties concerned with defending digital rights.