Meta Locks Out Pro-Palestinian Instagram Account for ‘Security Reasons’

Meta has announced that the social media platform has locked out a popular Instagram account that supports Palestine.

The account @eye.on.palestine was no longer available as of Wednesday night, as well as a backup account. 

The primary account shares images and videos from Gaza, explicitly showing the Palestinian people’s experiences during the conflict with Hamas. It has over 6 million followers.

According to The Guardian, they temporarily suspended the account last year for “not following” community guidelines despite reinstating it later.

“They initially locked these accounts for security reasons after signs of compromise, and we’re working to” 

A week ago, Instagram issued an apology for adding the word “terrorist” to several Palestinian user profiles, which came as a result of a bug. At the time, users translated bios that included the word “Palestinian” written in English on their profile, the Palestinian flag emoji, and the word alhamdulillah written in Arabic, which would read out as “Praise be to God, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom” when auto-translated to English.

After resolving the issue, the auto-translation reads, “Thank God.”

“We fixed a problem that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations in some of our products. We sincerely apologize that this happened,” a Meta spokesperson told The Guardian.

In recent weeks, users of censored and shadow-banned posts supporting Palestinians have accused Instagram. The platform faced a similar backlash during Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2021.

“We’ve uncovered a disturbing pattern of silenced Palestinian voices on Free’s platforms. Palestinian content is unfairly targeted, while hate speech and incitement against Palestinians go largely unchecked,” Nadim Nashif, the director of the social media group 7amleh, the Arab Center for Social Media Advancement, said.

Censorship is a significant issue, with media outlets, journalists, and influencers like Eye on Palestine being heavily restricted in terms of reach and content. This crackdown prevents the world from hearing the truth from the ground.”

A group tracking the silencing of Palestinian voices has logged 238 instances of censorship in the past few weeks.