Meta’s content moderation policies and systems have increasingly silenced voices in support of Palestine on Instagram and Facebook in the wake of the hostilities between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups.
'We won't be silenced': Meta removes Instagram accounts of pro-Palestine advocacy group
Pro-Palestinian activists have complained of suppression of speech since the war on Gaza began on 7 October
Meta Refuses to Answer Questions on Gaza Censorship, Say Sens. Warren and Sanders
Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta dodged questions from Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders about censorship of posts about Gaza.
15 articles a day: The extent of the Israeli army’s media interference
In 2025, the military censor banned or redacted over 5,000 news reports, with suppression peaking during Israel’s war with Iran.
Meta 'financially enabling' Israeli settler violence against Palestinians, report says
Findings published by 7amleh reveal Meta's bias in the moderation of content by Israelis and Palestinians
Leader-driven or Leaderless: How Participation Structure Sustains Engagement and Shapes Narratives in Online Hate Communities
Extremist communities increasingly rely on social media to sustain and amplify divisive discourse. However, the relationship between their internal participation structures, audience engagement, and narrative expression remains underexplored. This study analyzes ten years of Facebook activity by hate groups related to the Israel–Palestine conflict, focusing on anti-Semitic and Islamophobic ideologies. Consistent with prior work, we find that higher participation centralization in online hate groups is associated with greater user engagement across hate ideologies, suggesting the role of key actors in sustaining group activity over time. Meanwhile, our narrative frame detection models—based on an eight-frame extremist taxonomy (e.g., dehumanization, violence justification)—reveal a clear contrast across hate ideologies: centralized Islamophobic groups employ more uniform messaging, while centralized anti-Semitic groups demonstrate greater framing diversity and topical breadth, potentially reflecting distinct historical trajectories and leader coordination patterns. Analysis of the inter-group network indicates that, although centralization and homophily are not clearly linked, ideological distinctions emerge: Islamophobic groups cluster tightly, whereas anti-Semitic groups remain more evenly connected. Overall, these findings clarify how participation structure may shape the dissemination pattern and resonance of extremist narratives online and provide a foundation for tailored strategies to disrupt or mitigate such discourse.
Changes to the Facebook Algorithm Decreased News Visibility Between 2021-2024
Platforms, especially Facebook, are primary news sources in the US. In its widely criticized "War on News," Meta algorithmically deprioritized news and political content. We use data from 40 news organizations (5,243,302 Facebook posts, 7,875,372,958 user reactions) and 21 non-news pages (396,468 posts; 1,909,088,308 reactions) between January 1, 2016 and February 13, 2025 to examine how these changes influenced news visibility on the platform. Reactions to news declined by 78% between 2021 and 2024 while reactions to non-news pages increased, indicating targeted suppression of news visibility. Low-quality sources were especially suppressed, yet the 2025 end to "War on News" increased user reactions to news, especially low-quality ones. These changes do not reflect decreased news supply, Facebook user base, or interest in news over this period.
'It's digital colonialism': how Facebook's free internet service has failed its users
Free Basics, built for developing markets, focuses on ‘western corporate content’ and violates net neutrality principles, researchers say
Widely Viewed Content Report: What People See on Facebook | Transparency Center
Facebook regularly publishes reports to give our community visibility into community standards enforcement, government requests and internet disruptions
Social media, extremism, and radicalization
Fears that YouTube recommendations radicalize users are overblown, but social media still host and profit from dubious and extremist content.
Facebook, YouTube and Twitter remove disinformation targeting Ukraine
Facebook parent company Meta says it has uncovered Russian efforts to undermine trust in the Ukrainian government and to hack Ukrainian military officials and journalists using social media.
Facebook lifts restrictions on calling women ‘property’ and trans people ‘freaks’
The social media giant Meta has loosened its public rules on hate speech as Mark Zuckerberg seeks to curry favour with Donald Trump
Removing sexually explicit content from r/all
327K subscribers in the modnews community. An official community for announcements from Reddit, Inc. pertaining to moderation.
Content Sharing within the Alternative Media Echo-System: The Case of the White Helmets
In June 2017 our lab began a research project looking at online conversations about the Syria Civil Defence (aka the “White Helmets”). Over…
Facebook did little to moderate posts in the world’s most violent countries
In some of the world’s most high-profile conflict zones, the tech giant invested few resources and failed to stem a steady stream of harmful posts, according to internal documents.
Meta is limiting how much political content users see. Here's how to opt out of that
Meta is now limiting the amount of political content it recommends to Instagram and Threads users. Here's why it made the change — and how to opt out of it.
