The report also has some pretty strange language, like mentioning that a post which was flagged for nudity contained a picture of a dead woman, and a fully-clothed man holding her body. But... There are so, so many pictures of fully-clothed, male members of Hamas holding nude or partially-nude dead women they abducted and/or raped before murdering. Why does the report only say that the man was fully clothed? Maybe it's just a grammatical error, but they're really light on the details, and releasing the underlying data would answer a lot of questions.
Personally I am suspicious of HRW's report, since they've been caught releasing misleading reports in the past, and the director of HRW's Israel/Palestine division is a BDS activist [1]. Obviously your viewpoint may be different, but without access to the underlying information it's pretty hard to make a compelling case to either side... Which to me points to the report being more worthy of suspicion, since if it was clear-cut, they'd easily convince more people of their correctness by releasing the data.
1: https://www.ngo-monitor.org/fact-sheet-on-omar-shakirs-bds-c...
> Why does the report only say that the man was fully clothed?
It does not. This is misrepresenting what is written in the report, to say the least. There are two such examples in the report (not sure if they refer to the same image): The first one is "image of a Palestinian father in Gaza who was killed while he was holding his clothed daughter, who was also killed" and the other one is "an image of a fully clothed man holding a girl, both deceased". Obviously in both pictures both man and the woman are dead, debunking your "male members of Hamas holding nude or partially-nude dead women" theory.
> However, they don't share what the original post was; responding with a series of Palestinian flags to an Israeli hostage relative's post about their kidnapped sibling, for example, would be clear harassment and abuse.
Again, this is just a guess and not factual information. In fact, the report has a link to the original source in footnote 78 (https://theintercept.com/2023/10/28/instagram-palestinian-fl...) and one of the comments Instagram has hidden was on a pro-Palestinian post:
> In one, a user commented on an Instagram video of a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Jordan with green, white, and black heart emojis corresponding to the colors of the Palestinian flag, along with emojis of the Moroccan and Palestinian flags.
Also:
> The Intercept reviewed several hidden comments containing the Palestinian flag emoji that had no reference to Hamas or any other banned group.
When someone else's information is wrong, you're of course welcome to correct it, but please do so by providing correct information and omit swipes and other flamebait, which only degrade discussion and evoke worse from others.
I know that's not easy to do when emotions are running high, but it's something we all need to work on—and it's the same for everyone, regardless of which side they're on in any conflict.
"responding with a series of Palestinian flags to an Israeli hostage relative's post about their kidnapped sibling, for example, would be clear harassment and abuse."
This is a hypothetical. The poster is literally "making up things."
* This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
> In another, a user posted just three Palestinian flag emojis. Another screenshot seen by The Intercept showed two hidden comments consisting only of the hashtags #Gaza, #gazaunderattack, #freepalestine, and #ceasefirenow.
The Intercept does not provide the context on the posts that the flag comments were on, or the hashtags — and visibly-Jewish people across social media have been barraged since Oct. 7th by strangers brigading their completely-unrelated posts with comments like this, and are targeted for harassment just for being Jewish; I think being suspicious of the context is fairly natural. And please refrain from personal attacks.
Re: the man holding the girl — yes, I am referring to the one in which both are deceased, but only the man is referenced as being fully-clothed; members of Hamas can be deceased too. Maybe the girl is also fully-clothed, but not releasing any of the data doesn't help build confidence.
You are right. I had already edited my post before you posted your response.
> I referenced the three Palestinian flags, not the heart emojis
> members of Hamas can be deceased too. Maybe the girl is also fully-clothed
These sound highly nitpicky and like hypotheses that are hard to justify (a Hamas terrorist raping and killing a woman, then getting killed himself and taken a picture of, while the woman is still in his arms, naked? Really?).
I think we are missing the semantics here. My points were:
- Instagram/Facebook/etc can censor comments as simple as emojis, even though they were posted as comments to pro-Palestinian stories.
- They also censor pictures for nudity, even though they are not. Note that even though the reports is ambiguous about one of such photos, it clearly says that the man and his daughter, both deceased, are fully clothed.
Even ignoring the self-selection sampling issues here, .01% is not exactly something to just wave off.
Am one of those ? I always mark these as spam as I try to keep my account politics free. I have some friends that are obsessed with the Palestinian cause and there was a time this stuff would constantly appear in my feed.
If you post on IG about Gaza and someone comments with a different viewpoint than yours, that's not "spam". If on your Gaza post I comment about how you too can be your own boss selling vitamins, that's spam. And if I comment about Palestinian rights on you post about fashion, that's spam.
> Human Rights Watch also found repeated inaccurate application of the “adult nudity and sexual activity” policy for content related to Palestine. In every one of the cases, we reviewed where this policy was invoked, the content included images of dead Palestinians over ruins in Gaza that were clothed, not naked. For example, multiple users reported their Instagram stories being removed under this policy when they posted the same image of a Palestinian father in Gaza who was killed while he was holding his clothed daughter, who was also killed.
... so no nudity, no sexual activity
> For example, a Facebook user post that said, “How can anyone justify supporting the killing of babies and innocent civilians…” was removed under Community Standards on “bullying and harassment.” Another user posted an image on Instagram of a dead child in a hospital in Gaza with the comment, “Israel bombs the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City killing over 500…” which was removed under Community Guidelines on “violence and incitement.”
... arguing _against_ violence is flagged as harassment. Image and statement about Israeli action flagged as incitement
> In one case, an Instagram user received a warning that the comment she posted “may be hurtful to others.” The comment, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, consisted of nothing more than a series of Palestinian flag emojis.[77] In other cases, Meta hid the Palestinian flag from comment sections or removed it on the basis that it “harasses, targets, or shames others.”[78]
...that's just kinda indefensible.
> Many users reported posts on Instagram being removed when they criticized the Israeli government, including the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no matter how nuanced or careful their posts were. Meta removed these posts under its “Dangerous Organizations or Individuals” and hate speech rules, respectively.
... which is crazy since there have been plenty of reasons to criticize Netanyahu well before the Oct 7 attacks.
On the topic of "From the river to the sea", they specifically mention that posts with this phrase, as well as others
> such as “Free Palestine,” “Ceasefire Now,” and “Stop the Genocide,” were repeatedly removed by Instagram and Facebook under “spam” Community Guidelines or Standards without appearing to take into account the context of these comments.
I.e. Meta's own cited policy was not that it "is considered hateful" as you say, but that this political expression was labeled as spam. That sounds pretty bogus.
As for the "is considered hateful by many", that's true, but is also subjective, and very tangled given that prominent Israeli conservatives have used very similar phrasing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea#Simi...
If someone actually praising the Oct 7 attacks or something gets flagged/banned/etc, then sure, Meta is just applying its policies. That does not seem to be what's happening here. It's true that the report doesn't give numbers for these specific treatments, and the authors have a limited and biased view based on who responded to their call for evidence. But the limited view doesn't seem to be of Meta even-handedly and competently applying their policies.
_However_, I don't want to attribute everything to malice where incompetence may be at least a partial explanation. If motivated 3rd parties are repeatedly flagging a photo of a clothed, dead Palestinian as "nudity", and Meta's systems are built with the assumption that such user-provided flags are presumed trustworthy, then we could easily see how someone posting that photo would get incorrectly/inappropriately flagged.