It's like they're trying to manipulate your emotions to achieve the ends of the deep state in DC. Huh, Facebook employs psychologists, don't they? Weird. Just a coincidence, I guess.
| The Intercept is the toy of Pierre Omidyar, yet another Progressive internet billionaire who also donates to all the usual causes and organizations. In his case, the French-born Iranian-American gave us eBay, which he ran until 2015. Under the circumstances, certain prejudices are de rigueur. |
[TheIntercept] AFTER A SERIES of Israeli airstrikes against the densely populated Gaza Strip earlier this month, Palestinian Facebook and Instagram users protested the abrupt deletion of posts documenting the resulting death and destruction. It wasn’t the first time Palestinian users of the two giant social media platforms, which are both owned by parent company Meta, had complained about their posts being unduly removed. It’s become a pattern: Palestinians post sometimes graphic videos and images of Israeli attacks, and Meta swiftly removes the content, providing only an oblique reference to a violation of the company’s "Community Standards" or in many cases no explanation at all.
Not all the billions of users on Meta’s platforms, however, run into these issues when documenting the bombing of their neighborhoods.
Previously unreported policy language obtained by The Intercept shows that this year the company repeatedly instructed moderators to deviate from standard procedure and treat various graphic imagery from the Russia-Ukraine war with a light touch. Like other American internet companies, Meta responded to the invasion by rapidly enacting a litany of new policy carveouts designed to broaden and protect the online speech of Ukrainians, specifically allowing their graphic images of civilians killed by the Russian military to remain up on Instagram and Facebook.
| Meta put their thumb on a scale? I’m shocked. Shocked!! |
No such carveouts were ever made for Palestinian victims of Israeli state violence — nor do the materials show such latitude provided for any other suffering population.
To know who rules you, simply find who you are not allowed to criticize.
| The Ukrainians? But Mr. Omidyar is — well, was — Persian. Now he follows the Dalai Lama and tries to do good in the world, as he sees it. Sometimes he is right. |
RIGHTS ADVOCATES TOLD The Intercept that the exemptions made for the Russia-Ukraine war are the latest example of a double standard between Meta’s treatment of Western markets and the rest of the world — evidence of special treatment of the Ukrainian cause on Meta’s part since the beginning of the war and something that can be seen with media coverage of the war more broadly.
Though the majority of users on social platforms owned by Meta live outside the United States, critics charge that the company’s censorship policies, which affect billions worldwide, tidily align with U.S. foreign policy interests.
| Sometimes, no doubt. When the U.S. government is in Democratic Party hands. They were decidedly oppositional when Donald Trump was in the White House. |
Rights advocates emphasized the political nature of these moderation decisions. "Meta was capable to take very strict measures to protect Ukrainians amid the Russian invasion because it had the political will," said Shtaya, "but we Palestinians haven’t witnessed anything of these measures."
Meta’s public-facing Community Standards rulebook says: "We remove content that glorifies violence or celebrates the suffering or humiliation of others because it may create an environment that discourages participation" — noting a vague exception for "graphic content (with some limitations) to help people raise awareness about these issues." The Violent and Graphic Content policy places a blanket ban on gruesome videos of dead bodies and restricts the viewing of similar still images to adults 18 years and older.
In an expanded, internal version of the Community Standards guide obtained by The Intercept, the section dealing with graphic content includes a series of policy memos directing moderators to deviate from the standard rules or bring added scrutiny to bear on specific breaking news events. A review of these breaking news exceptions shows that Meta directed moderators to make sure that graphic imagery of Ukrainian civilians killed in Russian attacks was not deleted on seven different occasions, beginning at the immediate onset of the invasion. The whitelisted content includes acts of state violence akin to those routinely censored when conducted by the Israeli military, including multiple specific references to airstrikes.
| Oh dear. Ukraine = Israel. That’s going to upset some of our new visitors. Others, of course, will be pleased, as they’ve been saying so all along. |
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