Facebook to examine policies of Arabic and Hebrew content

Dubai: Social media giant Facebook has decided to conduct a thorough examination to determine whether Facebook's content moderation in Arabic and Hebrew, including its use of automation, have been applied without bias.

"We have partnered with a non-profit organisation expert in business and human rights, BSR, to conduct human rights due diligence of Facebook's impacts during May-June's intensified violence in Israel and Palestine," Facebook said in a statement on Friday.

The company also announced that it will implement it's overisght board's recommendation in defining and prioritising all salient human rights issues according to the guidance of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

This decision comes after 7amleh, the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, and several local, regional, and international human rights organizations, coalitions, and networks demanded that Facebook provide a transparent and equal policy on Palestinian content.

Following the announcement, 7amleh - in a statement applauded Facebook for its "surprising" decision to conduct an independent investigation into the moderation policies for Arabic and Hebrew content, calling it "an important step in the right direction."

Nearly 200 Facebook staff members had also accused its systems of unfairly taking down or down-ranking pro-Palestine content before and during Israel's latest offensive on Gaza.

As per a report by Arab News, an investigation by Human Rights Watch found that Facebook wrongfully silenced Palestinian content, including documentation of Israeli human rights violations, during the uprising that occurred in May.

Following an internal inquiry, Facebook admitted that it had made errors in some of its decisions, but HRW said the "company's acknowledgment of errors and attempts to correct some of them are insufficient and do not address the scale and scope of reported content restrictions."

The May violence, followed by Facebook's discriminatory acts, increased pressure against the firm to end any and all bias against Palestinian content.