A former engineer working for Meta accused the company yesterday of bias in handling content related to Israel’s war against the Palestinians in Gaza. Palestinian-American Ferras Hamad also alleged in his lawsuit that Meta fired him for attempting to address bugs that were suppressing Palestinian Instagram posts, Reuters has reported.
Hamad worked for the company from 2021 and filed his suit in a California state court. He is suing the social media giant for discrimination, wrongful dismissal and other claims related to when he had to leave his job in February.
In the complaint, Hamad accused Meta of consistently displaying bias against Palestinians, saying that the company deleted internal employee communications mentioning the deaths of relatives in Gaza and investigated employees’ use of the Palestinian flag emoji. He pointed out that no such investigations were conducted when employees posted Israeli or Ukrainian flag emojis in similar contexts.
Hamad’s allegations highlight long-standing criticisms by human rights groups regarding Meta’s content moderation related to Israel and the Palestinian territories, including findings from an external investigation commissioned by the company in 2021. Since the onset of the war, Meta has faced accusations of suppressing expressions of support for Palestinians. Nearly 200 Meta employees raised these concerns in an open letter to Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and other leaders earlier this year.
According to Hamad, his dismissal appeared to be linked to a December incident involving an emergency troubleshooting procedure for severe platform issues, known within Meta as a SEV or “site event”. He apparently identified procedural irregularities in the handling of an SEV related to content restrictions on Palestinian Instagram accounts, which prevented their posts from appearing in searches and feeds. One instance involved a short video by Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza being misclassified as pornographic despite depicting a building destroyed by Israel in Gaza.
Hamad reported receiving conflicting instructions from colleagues regarding the SEV’s status and his authorisation to assist, despite his prior involvement with similarly sensitive SEVs, including those related to Israel, Gaza and Ukraine. His manager later confirmed in writing that the SEV fell within his job responsibilities.
The following month, after being informed by a Meta representative that he was under investigation, Hamad filed an internal discrimination complaint after which he was dismissed. Meta cited his violation of a policy prohibiting employees from working on issues involving accounts of people they know personally, referring to Azaiza, even though Hamad informed the company that he had no personal connection to him.
The lawsuit comes after a December report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) documenting Meta’s increasing restrictions on online speech related to Palestine across platforms like Facebook and Instagram. The analysis found over 1,050 cases where content was taken down, accounts were suspended, shadow banning of accounts took place and other censorship happened, all targeting pro-Palestine voices.
Deborah Brown, HRW’s Acting Associate Technology and Human Rights Director, stated that these restrictions added “insult to injury at a time of unspeakable atrocities and repression already stifling Palestinians’ expression.” The report argued that amid devastating attacks in Gaza where Israel had already killed at the time of the report over 20,000 civilians, most of them children and women, Meta’s crackdown served to “further the erasure of Palestinians’ suffering.”
The HRW report found that the problem stemmed from flawed Meta policies and their inconsistent and erroneous implementation, overreliance on automated tools to moderate content, and undue government influence over content removals.
More than 36,000 Palestinians have now been killed by Israel in Gaza, the majority of whom were women and children, according to Gaza health officials. Nearly eight months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which in its latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to “immediately halt” its operation in the southern city of Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on 6 May. Israel has ignored the court order.
READ: Israel has killed 15,000 children in Gaza since October