New Report Documents How Meta Systematically Suppresses Palestinian Voices

Key Takeaways

• A report by Palestinian NGO 7amleh and Utrecht University analyzed 3,520 verified cases of digital rights violations against Palestinians on Meta platforms between 2021 and 2025, coining the term "platformicide" to describe the pattern.
• Only 32.5% of documented cases had an identifiable policy violation attached. The majority of users whose content was removed, restricted, or suppressed received no explanation.
• Where a reason was given, 57.2% of cases cited Meta's Dangerous Organizations and Individuals (DOI) policy — a provision designed for terrorist organizations, applied in 71.1% of identifiable journalist cases.
• 7amleh submitted 2,828 appeals to Meta on behalf of affected users over five years and received no response for nearly half of them — despite being a member of Meta's Trusted Partner programme.

A joint report by Palestinian NGO 7amleh and an academic research team at Utrecht University has introduced a term for what it documents: "platformicide" — defined as "the structural and intentional erasure of Palestinian digital presence, visibility, and participation across social media platforms," according to Al Jazeera's reporting on the study. 

The report analyzed 3,520 verified cases of digital rights violations logged through 7amleh's own observatory between January 2021 and December 2025.

The lead researcher, Fabio Cristiano of Utrecht University, was explicit about what the data shows: "This is not simply about removing content. It is about denying a population access to the infrastructures through which they can claim their existence online."

The cases include account suspensions, restrictions on livestreaming capabilities, content takedowns, and — after October 7, 2023 — a sharp rise in shadowbanning, the covert reduction of a user's reach without notification. Shadowbanning cases rose from near-zero to 3.5% of enforcement actions after the start of Israel's war on Gaza.

One documented case: Jerusalem-based journalist Faten Elwan has more than 300,000 followers on Instagram. Her account has been suspended eight times during the war. She has been banned from livestreaming for 360 consecutive days, with automatic renewals since. 

When her account was reactivated after a two-month suspension in April 2026, her first story — a video of a walk along the sea — reached 30,000 views. Within an hour, her subsequent stories were reaching a few hundred. "People tell me: if we don't specifically search for you and type your name, 'Faten Elwan', together, we can't find you. I no longer exist," she told Al Jazeera.

The Policy Being Applied — and How It's Being Applied

Where a reason was given for enforcement actions, 57.2% of cases cited Meta's Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy — a provision designed to prevent the promotion of terrorist and violent organizations. Among journalist cases specifically, that figure rises to 71.1%. Media outlets, NGOs, and reporters covering the war in Gaza were being processed under the same policy category as designated terrorist organizations.

Of all documented cases, only 32.5% had any identifiable policy violation attached. The majority of Palestinian users whose content was removed, restricted, or suppressed received no explanation they could point to. Cristiano's characterization of this as structural rather than incidental is grounded in that figure: "The overbroad application of DOI seems to criminalise Palestinian society as a whole."

The chilling effect extends beyond the people directly targeted. Maisoon Zoubi, a journalism teacher and media specialist at Palestinian media centre I'lam, described the secondary impact: "A state of tension has been prevalent ever since we learned about cases of investigations, arrests, and page bans against journalists. 

This makes me strengthen my own self-censorship." Her team, during the war, refrained from publishing events, images, or reports that could trigger a complaint — not because of a direct order, but because the enforcement pattern made the risk visible.

The Appeals Process That Doesn't Work

7amleh submitted 2,828 appeals to Meta on behalf of affected users over five years through the Trusted Partner programme — a channel specifically designed to give civil society organizations preferential access to escalate cases. Nearly half received no response. 

The programme's advocacy manager, Lama Nazeeh, told Al Jazeera: "Independent reviews show the partners who get real responses are those with private contacts inside the company, not those using the official channel."

Meta, in response to a request for comment, pointed to independent due diligence reports published in 2022 and updates in its human rights reports, and noted revisions to the DOI policy to allow more social and political discourse in certain cases.

There is also a dimension of this story that extends into international law. Content removed from Gaza — videos of air strikes, testimonies of survivors — represents potential evidence in future accountability proceedings. The Berkeley Protocol, adopted by the UN to guide the use of digital open-source information in international investigations, treats such material as potential evidence of war crimes. 

When that content is deleted, it may become inaccessible. Nazeeh put it plainly: "Meta holds the entire archive of evidence and treats it as disposable."

Platform Power and Who It Falls On

The findings here sit within a debate we've tracked across this series: who controls what gets seen online, and whose communities bear the cost when that control is exercised poorly or selectively. This isn't a straightforward story — content moderation at scale is genuinely difficult, and Meta operates in a politically contested environment where any decision about Gaza-related content will draw criticism from multiple directions.

But the report's data makes a case that's harder to dismiss than a collection of individual complaints: consistent application of a terrorism-focused policy to journalists, NGOs, and ordinary users; enforcement without explanation in the majority of cases; a trusted appeals channel that doesn't function as described; and a post-October 7 rise in shadowbanning that correlates with the most intense period of the war. 

"We do not need less content moderation," Cristiano told Al Jazeera. "We need better content moderation, one that does not exceptionalise and criminalise Palestinian users and Palestinian content."

A free internet requires that marginalized communities can document and share their experiences — not just the communities whose presence major platforms have decided is uncomplicated.