The issue surfaced when individuals with the term “Palestinian” in English on their profiles, accompanied by the Palestinian flag emoji and the Arabic phrase “Alhamdulillah” (meaning “Praise be to God”), experienced an unexpected translation error. When auto-translated to English, the Arabic phrase was inaccurately rendered as “Praise be to God, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom.”
A spokesperson from Meta expressed their regret over the incident, stating, “We fixed a problem that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations in some of our products. We sincerely apologize that this happened.”
The translation glitch was initially brought to light by a TikTok user known as khanman1996, who conducted tests with various combinations and discovered that they all resulted in the term “terrorist.” It is worth noting that @khanman1996, although not of Palestinian descent, discovered this issue after being alerted to it by a Palestinian friend.
A few users claimed that they were subjected to “shadow banning,” a practice that intentionally reduces the visibility of their posts, supposedly due to their pro-Palestinian content. Meta responded to these allegations by clarifying that a bug affecting Stories, a feature on Instagram, temporarily impacted post reach but emphasized that it was unrelated to the content’s subject matter.
The company has also stated that they have implemented new measures to address harmful content on their platforms, especially during times of conflict. They firmly denied any deliberate suppression of voices expressing support for Palestinians.
The development is of the result of prior accusations against Instagram for allegedly limiting the visibility of pro-Palestinian content, sparking concerns about the handling of sensitive political topics by social media platforms.
Meta has acknowledged the error and assured users that it was a technical mistake and not a deliberate action. In addition to this incident, the platform has faced accusations of suppressing content expressing support for Palestinians, particularly during the Israel-Gaza conflict.
