Activists of social media platforms have been accused of deliberately blackouting the media by blocking their voices in support of the Palestinian cause, after most of the pioneers of social networks received warnings of a ban and withholding their posts that include the tag "Save Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood", with the threat of the possibility of completely deleting the accounts if the posts described by the management of the Facebook company are repeated In contravention of the Community Guidelines for the Facebook and Instagram community.
It was not logical when Facebook deleted some Palestinian journalists' publications that reported violations by an occupying army against an unarmed people, despite the fact that these posts did not incite hatred or included any censure, racism, or any image of the prohibited posts within the Facebook guide.
A few days ago, Facebook deleted a famous video clip of the Palestinian journalist Maha Rizk, which included a dialogue between a Palestinian woman and an Israeli settler who seized her house, when the first woman told him that he had stolen her house. Violation, Facebook will remove it without warning.
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter's actions were not only limited to blocking and preventing account holders from being able to comment, but rather hiding posts from followers, undermining access to them, and even removing massive numbers of them.
Some have tried to circumvent Facebook's algorithms by placing commas or symbols in words indicating the content of the Palestinian issue, especially those dealing with the bombing of Gaza, the attack on worshipers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the forced displacement of the people of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, or that include words like Jerusalem, Hamas or Israel, and other words, as it is written, for example, "Isra **el."
Yesterday, the pioneers of social media devised another way to camouflage the Arabic language, to deceive the algorithms of Facebook and Instagram, while ensuring the spread of posts without blocking.
The method is based on writing the Arabic text without points, where the text is entered on one of the sites and converted to another alternative without points, but it can be read easily.
The crisis of the spread of Palestinian content through social platforms is still raging, but some social media experts have provided a set of tips to reduce the chances of the ban that may be exposed in the event of a desire to participate in the publication of photos, publications and any tag in support of the Palestinian cause by avoiding the following errors:
Avoid adding more than one hashtag in a single post on any social media platform.
The more hashtags a post has, the smaller it will reach your followers.
Repeatedly copying and pasting gives a warning to Facebook as they are automatic responses, and the person who wrote the hashtag is a machine, not a human.
It is imperative to add additional content in the comment or post, and it is not sufficient to ask others to copy the comment itself, as this may expose you to blocking.
Do not repeat sending the same message automatically to all friends and followers, and remember that you have a maximum number of activities (like / or follow / message / comment / remove / like / share) on each platform daily, if you exceed it, you may be banned.
Before using the tag, make sure it is there first, look for the tag on the platform you use, and if you did not find a trace or numbers of previous posts for it, then this means that the platform has deleted it.
Tag Usage Policies
Each social platform deals with hashtags differently, in Twitter, for example, the popular hashtag is the fastest growing in the least possible time, while on Instagram, the popular hashtag is the most used, and Facebook, the hashtag is less important and influential than Twitter and Instagram.
Now it is common for a large number of hashtags to be repeated and repeated automatically, and you may need some information about how to use the hashtag.
Also, adding the hashtag in the comments does not increase what contributes to its spread or leads the trend, as the hashtag in the comment does not appear in the search results, and the most useful thing is to add the hashtag in the main post.
A tag in the English language includes Arabic content, which may not reach the target audience, as the tag will appear at the front of the "trend" but will become incomprehensible to non-Arabic speakers, so it may be better to use two texts in Arabic and English together for clarity.
What does it mean for communication platforms to consider you a machine?
Every Facebook user has the right to write 180-200 comments per day, if this limit is broken, Facebook may automatically consider that user just a machine.
However, Facebook allows 5,000 likes per day and 150 messages to be added, otherwise it would be considered "automated" robotic behavior.
A time difference of at least a minute or two should be left between each activity.
As for Instagram users, they can do 500 activities per day if the account has an average activity and followers.
As for new account holders, they are entitled to only 100 activities, while those with verified accounts have the right to one thousand activities.
Facebook policies .. visual content
The visual content most prevalent on communication platforms is the bloodless images and videos and the influential human stories, and although the reality is more harsh than what the publications of the communication platforms carry, the latter considers that content against its policies, and then it is blocked automatically.
Double standards
Freedom of expression and human rights advocates have already raised concerns that social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are regularly allowing hate speech to white nationalists to circulate, while posts and pages advocating for the rights of persecuted communities - from Palestine to Kashmir to Myanmar - continue unchecked. While the Palestinian Ministry of Health page in Gaza was blocked from Facebook 3 times, including during the coronavirus pandemic.
According to Palestinian human rights groups and journalists for several years, Israeli NGOs funded by the Israeli government have systematically worked to make Facebook conceal Israel's human rights violations by censoring Palestinians and supporters of Palestinian rights on their platform.
Facebook complied with 95% of the Israeli government's requests to censor Palestinian posts, especially during the period when Israeli Amy Palmor was selected among the Facebook sages, while hate speech posts such as "Death to Palestine" or "Every Muslim is the dead terrorist" has not been removed. Or flagged by Facebook for violating the world's most popular platform community standards.