As bombs fell on Gaza in October 2023, Palestinian journalists turned to social media to show the world what was happening to their people. Israel’s siege on Gaza had been intensified, with food and water banned at one point, and the ban on the entry of foreign journalists was likely intended to create a media blackout during the genocidal war on the enclave. While Palestinian media workers and citizen journalists in Gaza documented the genocide, there were other challenges in sharing evidence of war crimes with the outside world.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented cases where Instagram removed images and videos showing Palestinian civilians killed or injured in Israeli attacks, claiming they broke Meta’s “violence and incitement” rules. It highlights a trend of apparent social media subterfuge, which I describe as Echoicide, where a message might not be erased, but the medium through which it travels is weakened to the point that the voice loses its echo. A social media platform can remove a post or suspend an account, but equally damaging, it can also reduce recommendations, making it harder to find content on Gaza or push users to change their language and posts about the war due to fear of penalties.
Ultimately, a message may remain online, but its audience shrinks, weakening its place in the public record and collective memory. Palestinian journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, with more than 1.1 million followers on Instagram, has been a key medium for sharing firsthand information and accounts from the people of Gaza with the world. These included videos of Israeli soldiers committing alleged war crimes, videos of US Senators appearing unmoved by the genocide in Gaza, and videos of Palestinians living under fire.
But soon after these videos or images have been posted, he has found them “disappear” or their reach severely limited for unexplained reasons. And because of that, Meta made my page disappear several times and then started severely shadow-banning accounts like mine that were central to the documentation process.” Smartphones, livestreams, satellite imagery and social media platforms have made it possible for people across the world to witness wars, including the genocide in Gaza, screened in real time. But it still raises important questions: If information has never been more accessible, why are some wars highly visible while others remain hidden?
What happens when a voice loses its “echo”? Leila Warah, a journalist based in the occupied West Bank, has seen her Instagram account suspended and reactivated several times during the war. But the problem of reach goes beyond algorithms and shadow banning to self-censorship and human impulses, she said.
A viewer can watch footage from Gaza, feel affected by it and then close the app and go back to their life,” Warah told Al Jazeera. Even when the content reaches people, the more important question is: What happens after you press share?” Digital censorship can be harder to recognise because content does not necessarily disappear, Jillian York, a London-based writer, activist and teacher with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Al Jazeera. Unlike traditional forms of suppression, which can be explicit, algorithmic censorship can leave testimonies online but reduce their reach and discoverability, making it harder to detect and flag.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
