The parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other platforms. Its social media platforms discriminate against Palestinians and have been implicated in the surveillance of Palestinian civilians.
Meta has long discriminated against Palestinian and pro-Palestinian advocates in its content moderation policies. It has, for example:
- Removed Palestinian and pro-Palestinian content from its platforms at the request of the Israeli military. Between October and November 2023 alone, Meta carried out 95% of the Israeli military's content takedown requests, raising serious concerns about the influence of Israeli authorities on its policies, according to Palestinian digital rights group 7amleh.
- Regularly censored content related to Palestine by suspending or permanentlydisabling or restricting features on accounts that advocate for Palestine, flagging comments like "Stop the Genocide" as spam, labeling criticism of Israel as "hate speech," and removing pro-Palestine content, according to Human Rights Watch.
- Silenced users for documenting and posting about Israel's violence against Palestinians, including, for example, the evictions of Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem in 2021. This was part of what Human Rights Watch called Meta's "systemic and global" censorship of Palestine-related content.
At the same time, Meta has published paid advertisements promoting property sales in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, calling for the demolition of Palestinian homes and infrastructure, and fundraising for Israeli military units operating in Gaza.
In addition, the Israeli military has been using data from WhatsApp as part of its surveillance of Palestinians, through which it attempts to identify potential targets. It is unclear whether Meta actively contributed to this effort.