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From Myanmar to Gaza, Meta’s Double Standard Has Deadly Consequences

BYTaysir Mathlouthi

October 7, 2025

In Gaza, the tragedy extends far beyond bombs and blockades. It unfolds online, in digital spaces controlled and shaped by Meta. Owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, the tech giant shapes how the world sees (or ignores) Palestinian suffering. With over 3.35 billion daily users, Meta is omnipresent in the lives of Palestinians and Israelis alike: 65% of Palestinians and 87% of Israelis use its platforms. In a context where freedom of press is curtailed, these networks have become lifelines, archives of war crimes, and spaces of resistance.

Yet behind the promise of “connecting the world,” Meta applies a stark double standard. According to 7amleh’s report— a digital rights and human rights activist group for Palestinians— the company has not only failed to protect Palestinian digital rights, it has actively contributed to their erasure. By allowing incitement to hatred and violence against Palestinians while systematically censoring their narratives, Meta has turned its algorithms into active instruments of dehumanization.

Gaza is not an isolated case. From Myanmar to Ethiopia, and now Palestine, Meta exhibits the same structural failure: an inability—or unwillingness—to prevent its platforms from becoming weapons of mass digital harm. The lessons of history underline the danger. In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal condemned Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher for crimes against humanity, noting that “without Streicher and his newspaper, the Nazi regime could not have persecuted and exterminated the Jews as it did.” Decades later, Rwanda’s RTLM radio incited genocide against the Tutsis, dehumanizing them as “cockroaches” to justify mass slaughter.

Today, Gaza faces the same patterns, now amplified digitally. Israeli officials describe Palestinians as “viruses,” “cockroaches,” or “human animals,” openly calling for “extermination” or “transfer.” These messages circulate widely on Meta platforms—Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp—sometimes even as paid content. Hashtags like #EraseGaza and #TransferNow normalize genocide, spreading freely while Palestinian voices are censored.

Meta is more than a platform: its algorithms actively amplify hate. In Myanmar, automated systems spread anti-Rohingya hate virally. In Ethiopia, inaction allowed anti-Tigrayan propaganda to fuel killings and displacement. In Palestine, the failure is twofold: Hebrew content is under-moderated due to weak tools, while Arabic or pro-Palestinian content is over-moderated, with posts deleted and accounts suspended for innocuous material. This algorithmic bias has deadly consequences.

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Une publication partagée par 7amleh Center (@7amleh)

Between October 2023 and May 2025, 7amleh’s Palestinian Digital Rights Observatory documented 2,265 cases of violent content, from calls to exterminate Palestinians and glorification of war crimes to disinformation campaigns. Posts by soldiers celebrating bombings and officials urging violence went largely unchecked. Moderation has been left to Palestinian NGOs, while Meta’s interventions remain superficial and reactive. WhatsApp, far from neutral, has been used to coordinate settler attacks, share target information, and organize violence in the West Bank. UN reports show that in 2024, 4,250 Palestinians were displaced and 1,760 structures destroyed, with platform metadata leveraged to target civilians. Meta’s failure to secure this data effectively enabled the identification of potential targets.

The company not only failed to act, it profited. Paid ads inciting violence or supporting settlement expansion ran unchecked. Oversight remains weak, reactive, and largely post-facto, allowing harm to spread before any action is taken. Palestinians, meanwhile, face systematic censorship and legal action for protest posts, while incitement in Hebrew thrives. Meta’s algorithms and policies reinforce this disparity: hundreds of Palestinian posts are removed, while hundreds of Hebrew posts inciting mass violence remain online. Impunity is institutionalized, both by Meta and by authorities.

International law recognizes the role of incitement in genocide. While companies are not criminally liable as legal persons, they remain bound by human rights obligations under the UN Guiding Principles, national law, and EU regulation. Civil liability, complicity claims, and regulatory sanctions are possible, yet enforcement remains scarce.

In Gaza, Meta is no longer just a digital platform. It is a central actor in the normalization and amplification of hate, sometimes even an enabler of extermination. Words on servers and social media now kill. Accountability is overdue. The 7amleh report is a roadmap for civil society, legal actors, and international bodies to demand justice, truth, and reparation.

From Myanmar to Gaza, Meta’s Double Standard Has Deadly Consequences

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From Myanmar to Gaza, Meta’s Double Standard Has Deadly Consequences

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