On Friday, October 20, Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg announced her solidarity with Palestine, demanding an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Thunberg announced her support for Palestine through a photo she posted on her personal account on the “X” platform, and accompanied it with a comment in which she said: “Week 270. Today we begin solidarity with Palestine and Gaza. The world must raise its voice and call for an immediate ceasefire and the achievement of justice and freedom for the Palestinians and all affected civilians.”
Week 270. Today we strike in solidarity with Palestine and Gaza. The world needs to speak up and call for an immediate ceasefire, justice and freedom for Palestinians and all civilians affected.
The photo shows Greta Thunberg holding a banner that reads, “Support Gaza,” and she is accompanied by three others holding different banners that read, “Free Palestine,” “This Jew supports Palestine,” and “Climate Justice.”
Earlier this week, Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg was arrested in London during a demonstration held on the sidelines of an oil and gas conference. A few days before that, she had written on her “X” account: “Reminder: Those in power do not need conferences, treaties, or agreements to start taking real action on climate. They can start today. When enough people come together, change will come and we will be able to "Achieve almost anything. So instead of looking for hope - start creating it.
Instagram apologizes for adding the word “terrorist” to some Palestinian users’ profiles!
Meta apologized after including the word “terrorist” in the biographical information of some Palestinian Instagram users, in what the company says was an error in automatic translation.
The issue, first reported by 404media , affected users who had the word "Palestinian" written in English on their profiles, and emojis of the Palestinian flag and the word "Praise be to God" written in Arabic.
When the phrase was automatically translated into English, it read: “Praise be to God, the Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom.”
TikTok user YtKingKhan posted earlier this week about the issue, pointing out various groups that still translate as "terrorist." One user responded by saying: "Please tell me this is a joke because I can't understand it and I'm out of words."
A Meta spokesperson told Guardian Australia the issue had been resolved earlier this week.
He explained: “We fixed an issue that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations to appear in some of our products. We sincerely apologize for this.”
Australian Electronic Frontier Organization secretary Fahd Ali, a Palestinian based in Sydney, said there was not enough transparency from Meta about how this was allowed to happen.
He continued: “There is a real concern about these digital biases, and we need to know where that is coming from. Is it stemming from the level of automation? Is it stemming from a problem in the training set? Is it stemming from the human factor in these tools? There is no clarity on that.” “This is what we should seek to address, and this is what I hope Meta will make clearer.”
A former Facebook employee, who had access to discussions among current Meta employees, told Guardian Australia that this issue had “pushed a lot of people to the brink” – internally and externally.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, Meta has been accused of censoring posts in support of Palestine on its platforms, as Meta was said to be banning accounts that post in support of Palestine, or reducing their content, meaning that they are less likely to appear on the pages of others.
In a blog post on Wednesday, Meta said that new measures had been taken since the war between Israel and Hamas began to “address the significant rise in harmful and potentially harmful content spreading on our platforms,” and that there was no truth to the assumption that the company was suppressing anyone’s voice.
She said there was a bug this week that resulted in reshared clips and posts not appearing in Instagram Stories, resulting in a significant drop in reach — and this was not limited to posts related to Israel and Gaza.
Meta also said that there was a global outage in Facebook's live video service for a short period.