Telesur: Social Media Imperialism? Facebook Bans Palestinian Content at Behest of Israel, US

TeleSur writes about Social Media Imperialism? Facebook Bans Palestinian Content at Behest of Israel, US.

Facebook has been working with Israeli Government officials to suppress Palestinian voices in the social media sphere according to a report published on Saturday in The Intercept. The partnership between the social media giant and officials in Tel Aviv has resulted in the censorship, removal or blocking of content deemed critical of the Israelis with these posting being branded as “incitement.”

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Facebook’s virtually unlimited acquiescence with Israeli requests to remove content, has been described as a “censorship rampage“ by Greenwald and have been carried out since Tel Aviv began blaming alleged, “online incitement” for unrest and resistance that overwhelmingly resulted in violence against Palestinian civilians. The hue and cry raised by Tel Aviv resulted in an arrangement between Facebook and the Israeli state, struck in Sept. 2016, that resulted in the creation of teams devoted toward the monitoring and removal of alleged “inflammatory content” criticizing the occupation.

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Despite Facebook’s vigilance over content, the Israelis deemed “inflammatory,” posts by extremist Jewish settlers and far-right Zionist officials calling for brutal repression and violence toward Palestinians went unchecked, leaving the dispossessed people with little leverage to combat the occupation’s control of the popular social network. Palestinian complaints highlighting an increasing Israeli social media discourse of hatred remained ignored by the California-based company.

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“One can create a fantasy world in one’s head if one wishes, in which Silicon Valley executives use their power to protect marginalized peoples around the world by censoring those who wish to harm them,” Greenwald noted.

“But in the real world, that is nothing but a sad pipe dream. Just as governments will, these companies will use their censorship power to serve, not to undermine, the world’s most powerful factions.”

Emphasis Mine

Capitalist companies exist to make a profit. They will do whatever it takes to keep making those profits.

It is delusional of the Israelis to imagine that these protests arise because of incitement. They cannot imagine that their own brutality, discrimination, harassment, dispossession, bombings, shootings, etc. towards the Palestinians has anything to do with the anger of the latter.