Editors and writers from Palestinian news publications reported that their Facebook accounts were 'blocked' with no apparent reason.
According to Aljazeera, the incident involves editors from the Shebab News Agency with 6.3 million likes and three executives from the Quds News Network with 5.1 million likes, who were also not able to access their accounts. Both news agency cover news, and its pages are two of the widely read pages for Palestinian news.
Those affected alleges that their pages may have been caused by an agreement between Facebook and the Israeli government a few weeks ago to combat "incitements" caused by Palestinians on social media. Qud's News Network, which is non-political, also experienced a suspension of the account but access was restored during the weekend.
Reports cite that 145 Palestinians have been indicted of incitement so far. Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked also mentioned that Tel Aviv had submitted 158 requests to Facebook for the past four months to remove content deemed as "incitement," and that 95 percent of these requests were granted.
A $1 billion lawsuit was filed against Facebook last summer for allegedly assisting groups in "recruiting, radicalising, and instructing terrorists."
The Electronic Intifada reported that Facebook apologized for the mistake. A spokesperson mentioned that "the pages were removed in error and restored as soon as we were able to investigate," adding that the Facebook team processes millions of reports and sometimes commit errors.
The two news agencies went down after being reported of violating Facebook's community standards. After the investigations, the accounts were restored. News agencies are expected to protest their experience and announced that they are using the hashtag #FBCensorsPalestine to make their point.
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