At the end of last week, Thomas Maddens, a filmmaker and activist based in Belgium, noticed something unusual, a video he posted to TikTok about Palestine with the word "genocide" suddenly stopped receiving engagement on the platform after an initial spike.
"I thought I would have received millions of views," Maddens told Al Jazeera, "but the video had stopped."
Maddens is among the many social media users accusing the world's largest social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, and TikTok, of censoring accounts or actively reducing the reach of pro-Palestine content, a practice known as shadowbanning.
Authors, activists, journalists, filmmakers, and regular users worldwide have reported that posts containing hashtags like "FreePalestine" and "IStandWithPalestine," as well as messages expressing support for civilian Palestinians killed by Israeli forces, are being hidden by these platforms.
Some users have also claimed that Instagram, owned by Meta, arbitrarily removed posts merely mentioning Palestine for violating "community guidelines." Others mentioned their Instagram Stories being hidden for sharing information about protests in support of Palestine in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Some even complained about the word "terrorist" appearing near their Instagram biographies.
In a post on X on October 15, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone attributed the reduced reach of posts to a bug.
"This bug affected accounts equally around the globe and had nothing to do with the subject matter of the content, and we fixed it as quickly as possible," Stone wrote.
Regarding the accusations of shadowbanning, Stone directed Al Jazeera to a Meta blog post that highlights the company's latest efforts to combat misinformation related to the Israel-Hamas war. The post mentioned that users who disagree with the company's moderation decisions can appeal.
The BBC reported that Meta apologized for adding the word "terrorist" to pro-Palestinian accounts, citing a problem that "briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations," which has now been fixed.
A TikTok spokesperson informed Al Jazeera that the company "does not moderate or remove content based on political sensitivities" and added that the platform removes "content that violates community guidelines, which apply equally to all content on TikTok."
YouTube and X did not respond to Al Jazeera's requests for comment.
Civil rights groups remain skeptical of the platforms' denials.
This month, 48 organizations, including 7amleh, the Arab Centre for Social Media Advancement, which advocates for the digital rights of Palestinian and Arab civil society, issued a statement urging tech companies to respect Palestinian digital rights during the ongoing war.
"We are concerned about significant and disproportionate censorship of Palestinian voices through content takedowns and hiding hashtags, among other violations," the statement said. "These restrictions on activists, civil society, and human rights defenders represent a grave threat to freedom of expression and access to information, freedom of assembly, and political participation."
Jalal Abukhater, 7amleh's advocacy manager, informed Al Jazeera that the organization had documented 238 cases of pro-Palestinian censorship, primarily on Facebook and Instagram. These cases included content takedowns and account restrictions.
"There is a disproportionate effort that targets Palestine-related content," Abukhater told Al Jazeera in an interview. "In contrast, the official Israeli narrative, as excessively violent as it could get, has more of a free rein because Meta considers it to be coming from 'official' entities, including the Israeli military and government officials."
