Massive Israeli campaign to remove pro-Palestinian posts from Facebook and Instagram revealed
Meta's internal information has revealed that the Israeli government is conducting large-scale removal requests for Instagram and Facebook posts that are critical of Israel or vaguely support Palestinians. Meta has also reportedly complied with 94% of removal requests from Israel since October 7, 2023.
Leaked Data Reveals Massive Israeli Campaign to Remove Pro-Palestine Posts on Facebook and Instagram
The issues between Israel and Palestine developed, and on October 7, 2023, war broke out between Israel and Hamas, the organization that effectively controls the Gaza Strip in Palestine.
According to internal data provided to Drop Site News by a Meta whistleblower, Meta's Integrity Organization, which works to ensure safety and reliability on the platform, is handling a large number of takedown requests from the Israeli government.
Meta removed an average of more than 90,000 posts every 30 seconds to comply with removal requests submitted by the Israeli government. In addition, starting on October 7, 2023, it significantly expanded its automated censorship of user posts, removing or suppressing an estimated 38.8 million posts across Facebook and Instagram between late 2023 and 2025.
Since October 7, 2023, the number of removal requests by the Israeli government has skyrocketed.
Meta has a mechanism for censoring posts after receiving reports from users, and also states that 'government authorities can request the removal of content on Facebook or Instagram if they believe it violates local
According to Drop Site News, Meta's removal system processes submitted reports in different ways depending on who is reporting them. Regular users can report posts using the platform's built-in reporting feature and request a review by Meta. Reported posts are usually first labeled as abusive or non-violative by AI and may be reviewed by human moderators in some cases. If the AI assigns a score indicating 'violation,' the post is automatically removed, while if it receives a lower score, a human moderator will review it and decide whether to take action.
Meanwhile, government authorities are given privileged channels to initiate reviews, and reports submitted through these channels are given high priority and are generally reviewed by humans rather than AI. The reviewed posts are then fed back to the AI, which will learn from the requests of government authorities and automatically remove user posts accordingly.
According to an Integrity Organization official, Meta's AI automated moderation frequently removes pro-Palestinian content that does not violate Meta's policies, and in some cases pro-Palestinian content that should have simply been deleted has been given a 'strike' rating. A strike is a rating given to relatively serious posts, and if an account receives too many strikes, the account will be removed.
According to an independent investigation by human rights organization Human Rights Watch, of the 1,050 posts removed or restricted on Facebook and Instagram since October 7, 2023, 1,049 were peaceful posts supporting Palestine, and only one was pro-Israel.
According to Drop Site News, the Israeli government's takedown requests contain the same complaint regardless of the content of the post. Most of them include a link to the post that the Israeli government considers problematic, stating that the post 'violates Israeli anti-terrorism laws, which prohibit glorifying terrorist acts and identifying or supporting terrorist organizations, and inciting them. It also violates Israel's privacy laws, which prohibit the publication of images in a way that humiliates the people depicted, because it contains images of dead, injured, and kidnapped people.' However, it is said that these complaints are not relevant to the content of the post.
Drop Site News points out that Meta's internal structure is behind this process. According to Drop Site News, the Integrity Organization, which processes the deletion requests, is led by Guy Rosen, a former Israeli military officer who served in the Israeli military intelligence unit, and Jordana Cutler, Meta's public policy director and former senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is also frequently involved, suggesting that the organization itself may be favorably aligned with Israel.
According to sources, when concerns were raised within the Integrity Organization about excessive policing of pro-Palestinian content, leadership responded that it was better to 'over-police potentially violating content than to under-police and risk allowing violating content to go unchecked.'
According to internal data, Israeli government takedown requests have targeted many users from Arab and Muslim-majority countries, with many affected countries including Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, and Algeria. According to Human Rights Watch, users from over 60 countries in total reported that content related to Palestine was censored. Notably, only 1.3% of Israeli takedown requests were targeted at Israeli users, making Israel unusual compared to other countries around the world that focus on censoring their own citizens.
Drop Site News noted that 'Israel is the largest source of takedown requests globally, and Meta has followed suit with a widening net of automated takedowns, creating what could be called the largest mass censorship operation in modern history.'
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