Facebook gaining negative fame while running disinformation campaign

In Gaza and Syria, journalists and activists feel Facebook censors their speech, flagging inoffensive Arabic posts as terrorist content.

Facebook, which owns Instagram, later apologized by explaining its algorithms had mistaken the third site in Islam for the militant group Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed offshoot of the secular Fatah party.

In a statement to the AP, a Facebook spokesperson said that over the last two years the company has invested in recruiting more staff with local dialect and topic expertise to bolster its review capacity around the world.

Few days back, facebook whistleblower Hague states a series of links between activity on Facebook and deadly violence in Myanmar and Ethiopia, and spying by China and Iran.

In Myanmar, where Facebook-based misinformation has been linked repeatedly to ethnic violence the company’s internal reports show it failed to stop the spread of hate speech targeting the minority Rohingya Muslim population.

In India, the documents show moderators never flagged anti-Muslim hate speech broadcast by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s far-right Hindu nationalist group because Facebook lacked moderators and automated filters with knowledge of Hindi and Bengali.

Facebook first developed a massive following in the Middle East during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, and users credited the platform with providing a rare opportunity for free expression and a critical source of news in a region where autocratic governments exert tight controls over both. But in recent years, that reputation has changed.

Online information and disinformation has been playing a crucial role in shaping public opinion throughout the Middle East and North Africa for over a decade. Facebook is a platform of running disinformation campaign which is used by many countries against their adversaries.

For instance, in 2019, Facebook removed 163 Facebook accounts, 51 pages, 33 groups, and four Instagram accounts for coordinated inauthentic behavior originating from Egypt against North African countries.