Facebook disabled an Israeli national news outlet without a clear reason.
Arutz Sheva reported on Nov. 10 that Facebook had suspended its page with 151,999 followers due to alleged complaints from other users. When the article was published, the outlet wrote, “While the Facebook page is still accessible, Arutz Sheva is unable to upload posts.” However, when MRC Free Speech America attempted to find the page the next day, the page had been completely disabled and was inaccessible to users.
Arutz Sheva noted that it had received several complaints that “may have stemmed from anti-Israel and antisemitic reporting campaigns against Israeli and Jewish pages.”
It is unclear whether a complaint against a specific post led to the suspension and disabling of the account. However, the outlet said it had received complaints related to seven reports it had posted about, including content related to “the elimination of senior Hezbollah official Nabil Qaouk on September 28th, an official IDF announcement about the commencement of the operation in Lebanon, [and] the elimination of the terrorist who murdered a father in front of his children on October 7th,” among others.
Arutz Sheva explained that it received the complaints “together with a message from Facebook reading: ‘It looks like you shared or sent something that attacks a person, or group of people, based on who they are.’" It is unclear how reports of the news in Israel would have violated Facebook’s Community Guidelines.
MRC researchers reached out to Facebook, but the platform did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.
This is not the first time Facebook has censored pro-Israel content.
MRC Free Speech America recorded in its exclusive CensorTrack database that, last year, Meta-owned Instagram censored actor Nate Buzolic for his posts supporting Israel shortly after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on civilians in Israel.
Buzolic told Fox News that Instagram had shut down his account three times and suggested that he too may have been a victim of a mass reporting complaint campaign. “I think what this really presents is a clear and coordinated effort of groups to shut down content and accounts like myself who have been exposing the atrocities of what Hamas has done,” he said.
Buzolic later added, “I think the American people need to sit back and realize that this is not grandmas in Texas who are reporting my accounts, but these are groups of people who know that the battle that's being fought on the ground in Israel is also an information war.”
In 2021 Facebook also censored Rabbi Akiva Pollack. He wrote in a post: "I previously posted about the 17,000 trending hashtags Hitler was right. Can we challenge that to #HitlerWasWrong Oh, and make it 18,000." Facebook deleted his post and locked his account for 24 hours. Although he disagreed with the decision, and Facebook reviewed the post, the company claimed in a subsequent message that it "confirmed" the post "didn't follow our Community Standards."
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
