Thorson Speaks With BBC News About How Meta Restricts News in Palestinian Territories

December 30, 2024

BBC

Emily Thorson

Political Science Department

Campbell Public Affairs Institute

International Affairs

Media & Journalism

Middle East & North Africa

BBC

Emily Thorson

Palestinian news outlets have seen a steep drop in audience engagement on their Facebook pages since October 2023. BBC News Arabic and BBC World Service analysis of more than 100,000 Facebook posts shows that news organizations based in Palestinian territories have seen a 77% drop in engagement since the start of the war in Gaza.

Analysis of similar pages from Israel and neighboring Arabic speaking countries shows a rise in engagement. It comes after a year of Palestinians complaining that they are being “shadow banned.”

On Facebook’s sister platform, Instagram, exclusive access to leaked documents exposes how a change was made to Instagram's algorithm at the start of the war in Gaza, targeting Palestinian users only. Meta confirmed changes to Instagram’s algorithm were made, and says “temporary product and policy measures” were adopted on Facebook in response to the conflict.

But Meta denies deliberately silencing Palestinian voices and stands by its decision to alter how many people see content from Facebook pages on safety grounds.

“It's a tough decision because they [Meta], in general, want to provide news for people with some exceptions perhaps. But they do also have this concern about hate speech,” says Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science.

“Fundamentally, Meta's main incentive is just to keep people on the platform, that's what they want to do. And that is always going to keep priority over things like keeping people fully informed or showing both sides of the issues.” she says.

Watch the full interview with BBC News, “How Meta restricted news in Palestinian territories,” beginning at 5:36.