Closed Cyberspace: Does Meta censor pro-Palestinian content?
An Al Jazeera social media experiment tests whether some platforms discriminate against pro-Palestinian, Arabic content.
Al Jazeera investigates how social media moderation and censorship policies work and whether the treatment of pro-Palestinian content in Arabic is fair and impartial. Before the Israeli war on Gaza that began in October 2023, Al Jazeera investigated the disparity between Meta’s moderation of Israeli versus Palestinian posts. They set up two Facebook pages, one in Arabic and another in Hebrew, both posting the same stories with the same pictures, but each following their own narratives. The film sees the moderators in action – and offers a range of insights into what some people now see as an increasingly closed cyberspace.