Tag: shadowbanning

  • Shaun King suspended, Motaz asked to remove content by Instagram

    Shaun King suspended, Motaz asked to remove content by Instagram

    American writer and activist Shaun King, famous for pro-Palestine advocacy on social media, has been suspended from Instagram.

    The news of the suspension was reported by Khalid Beydoun, another important voice on social media, speaking for the distressed in Palestine. “I felt it was a violation of my principles to not tell the truth about Gaza out of fear of getting banned,” Shaun reportedly told Beydoun.

    Earlier, Motaz Azaiza, photo-journalist from Gaza with a large following, also posted that he was receiving notifications from Instagram of either deleting or editing his content with the objection that they go against the guidelines on nudity or sexual activity of Instagram. The videos showed injured children crying out in pain after being hit by Israeli strikes.

    Motaz protested, “Am I shooting Nudes or what ? A lot of naked girls keep posting on Instagram which is (normal for them) and I don’t see them removing any of their content! But showing what kids of Palestine are facing in Gaza is nudity and sexual activity? Tell me if I’m right or wrong?”

    Another Palestinian journalist Hind Khoudary also posted about her account being shadowbanned by Instagram. This implies that her posts are not visible or are losing engagement because they are against the narrative Meta wants to propagate.

  • Pulitzer prize winning journalist Azmat Khan shadow-banned by Instagram on Gaza posts

    Shadowbanning by Instagram continues as Israel’s war on Gaza is being criticized. This time Pulitzer winning journalist Azmat Khan has been targeted by the social media giant.

    Azmat is an investigative reporter with New York Times, a Carneige Fellow and the Birch Assistant Professor at Columbia Journalism School.

    She took to Twitter (now X) and wrote, “After posting an Instagram story about the war in Gaza yesterday, my account was shadowbanned.”

    Khan expressed concerns affirmed by fellow journalists, “It’s an extraordinary threat to the flow of information and credible journalism about an unprecedented war.”

    She laid it all out for the world to know that the situation is getting dire for the journalists reporting from the war-zone. There are already extraordinary challenges to getting information from the ground — the killing of journalists, internet blackouts and electricity cuts— but these reports from journalists raise troubling questions about free press in this war.

    Other journalists weighed in by pointing out the rampant shadowbanning which may cause the valuable on-ground documentation to be lost. Alessandro Accorsi hinted at the “mistake” by which meta banned all content related to Sheikh Jarrah back in 2021.