told. it's great. but knows how long. so it's been it's been out on me. so. what remains are social distancing squaring and and washing the final hole marks of the pandemic set to be abandoned in late june but the new variant brings new uncertainty and prime minister boris johnson has urged people to be embraced their newfound freedoms but to do so with a heavy dose of caution join a whole al-jazeera manchester. and other top stories on al-jazeera israel's military has carried out a wave of heavy airstrikes on the gaza strip as the region's worst fighting in years enters a 2nd week. israeli attacks have

destroyed a high rise building that housed the gaza's religious affairs ministry and killed a senior commander of islamic jihad more than 15 kilometers of tunnels were also targeted with homes roads and clinics hate to 2 $112.00 palestinians have now been killed in the conflict including $61.00 children. rockets fired from gaza have hit buildings in a number of cities in southern israel on monday injuring 17 people residential buildings were struck in the cities of ashdod and for sheba sending people running to the shelters built to protect them from such attacks more than $3000.00 rockets have been fired towards israel. you know in the foreground. god the god of it in our all the people are. those who let it go get out today or. what they need then because no shelters go

there all the choice. to just stay home. at the end of this road or the palm of they have evacuated their home because one of the residential buildings received a warning from the israelis that they wouldn't bomb. their home the u.s. u.k. and canada have announced a wave of new sanctions on high ranking me and more military officials and the businesses that funds on the coordinated sanctions are in response to what they called the violent and lisa let tax against the country's pro-democracy movement the u.s. and canada focused on key military officers while britain targeted a jam exporter security forces of crackdown on protests in the country leaving close to $800.00 people died since the coup those are the top stories stay with us the stream is next i'll have more news for you in half an hour thanks for watching .

i am phemie ok for the past 2 weeks al jazeera has been reporting from east jerusalem and sharing news from the gaza strip online people from doing exactly the same thing commenting sharing their take but some people have noticed something odd going on let me give you a few examples here on twitter we have a beydoun he says twitter removed my video of gaza being bombed tonight was trying to live stream massive not but day rally in minneapolis on facebook but it took down my page over on the digital platform for young muslims muslim this is what

social media censorship of palestine looks like that is what they're calling it a crowd sourced some of the stories that they were seeing an asked people to absolutely share their stories and what they were seeing individuals post about palestine not showing up on search if you're looking for an individual you have to type out the entire name not just the beginning of a name their entire name of ways they don't come up sometimes people being stopped from going live and even live streams life video being blocked we are asked the founder of the distal part for muslim what did you find in your investigation and this is what amir told us a. and i report we documented over 12000 user experience and we sifted through 250 e-mails for people screenshots and documentation of their censorship grahams platform one of the largest things we noticed was

a lot of users were experiencing a drop in drop in their research when we posted about. interference platform and this is happening to a lot of key palestinian activists and this is happening to a lot of. public figures that are actively speaking out against the injustice is that palestinians are facing right now on. our show today also should media platforms the silence and palestinians there's so many of you on already i know you have a tight jump into the comments section and part of today's discussion 3 expert guests here or palestinians it's good to see you mona. mona introduce yourself to last. but the evening everybody saw this is what if they aired the local ad with the manager of that i don't think therefore that ben smith of social media had to have yellow welcome to the store but he will want you to know. my name is not

a man just him based rachel and i have been involved in social media. is very difficult actually it to happen. welcome to the state. hi everyone my name is my 2 upper class and i did the work of back to us now in the middle east and north africa region as the mean a policy manager we are a global digital rights organization working to defend that extend human rights. and i'm very pleased to be on your show. when i meet for a muslim talking you will or. will recognizing a lot of what he crowdsource the name festa gated but from the outside it could seem i use a whole other being poly know it what is staying on who would do this one good example for all of this start. basically what our content is facing is lots of facts and then from people. i access and influence and

ability to. censor it. we are not as able to control who censors who rates our content who manages that but unfortunately for us our enemies are more accessible they have better connections and even israeli government x. isn't a government employee might be an employee of facebook afterward after finishing with a government contract so there are axis seems to be way more intricate and more. than ours and that leads to such an biases being casually take into into consideration by those major companies and that's why re see the bias against a content very clearly when there is censorship and then there is a. gret apology by the company by the same time there is censorship and it's not a mistake that top ins and keeps happening often and too often actually i got

a happy couple thanked and saw what looked and let me tell you something there are like a 50 medicare perth's and to silence palestinians on the online space the israeli government is trying with all its power to silence palestinians it very few as a voluntary big towns where the israeli side vary in its 10 degree greste requests in the quest for the social media companies for example and in 21000 there are 8 or had made like 19000 requests to the social media companies regarding the country big down. but it can be a constant dig down and in 2020 then i'm but only continue to write or. other other other ways or other forts the israeli government has been used to silence palestinians online through the gun go which as a non-governmental organization but it's supported by the government they are

working like a child with the social media and they are playing with the i'll go to them by liking the profile its content or by the porting the palestinian content by the link so they are trying to hide the palestinian content or take a dump on and giving much more opportunities to the israeli content to promote that much more than that the israeli government is putting pressure on that social media companies to take the palestinian content down if we compare it with that israeli content we can see like we have observed and documented many google groups on their social media platforms like what's telegram they were organizing mobilizing themselves at that palestinians and inside against palestinians on that social media and through our web atomic we we have this annual report it's the end next of censorship and the last year i mean 2020 and version of this over this report

should luck when one out of every 10 posts about but if the unions and i don't quit painting violence speech and it also shows an increase in violent this course that where it's out of by 16 over the previous year which is 22001000 by doing so we can see how social media companies are biased against palestinian nation they are taken down the palestinian song and i just don't buy into the parson a lot of pushing for a moment because you are such evidence that you have a master organization of a huge and then you will seeing that schedule stressful such as from my what i can go to what twitter is is saying and what instagram is saying. on instagram com say communications we know that some people are experiencing issues uploading and hewing stories this is a widespread global technical issue not related to any particular topic and we're 6

in it right now and i just got a fast forward to a little bit later with now 60 issues is the issue 6. the short answer is no and i want to highlight it to our audience tonight is that this is not in your problem palestinian activists and journalists and users of social media have been decrying the discrimination that they're facing on those platforms for years but i am personally someone who has worked and wrote a lot about this topic i have not seen anything of this scale it's so great isn't of this boring and so incredible or it's beyond censorship it's it's digital repression social media companies are actively wrote suppressing the narrative oh palestinians and their allies were sharing solid solidarity contend with what's happening in palestine where i document ing human rights violations and war crimes

and so in media companies and particularly instagram but statement that you showed us was basically at the start of the censorship that we started documenting on thursday last week. but even though the company is specially facebook at every account of content takedown and restrictions repeatedly saying this is a technical error this is a system glimpse we haven't seen a week more than a week later any reduction in the content being taken down in fact we see more and more creative and city of swathes of restricting content online we're talking about shadow banning what mentioned by muslim people are finding it extremely hard to have an average outreach agni it did before before they started speaking out on the issue. when people aren't able to use the simple functions of

a platform like liking or commenting their live streaming is being disrupted in blocked on twitter and on twitter you'll find accounts being restricted. content being flagged as sensitive or accepting or offensive when it's actually a hash tag like hash tag save palestine or hash tag as under attack now there are many stories emerging from users showing ways in which to me even your methods that social media companies are using to suppress the narrative and to suppress the content and so those of those techniques so-called technical errors you know they are and can really convenient excuses i have to say i'm going to i'm going to give you another give you some more technical as we have one from twitter we have loss of face but of us here some opinions about what facebook is doing right now as we cover news from east jerusalem on the gaza strip have

a listen. facebook's oversight board an independent body tasked with deliberating on the platforms content decisions includes former director general these really minister of justice and the palmer palmer personally manage israel's cyber unit in the past which successfully lobbied for the removal of thousands of pieces of ballots in content from facebook in 2018 a former israeli justice minister claimed that facebook google and youtube were complying with up to 95 percent and was really content almost all of the. post about the illegal expulsion of palestinians and beatings and have thought bombings in gaza have been removed for violating community standards this footage however reveals israel's times of apartheid he still has a long history of collaborating with the israeli government the palestinians reaffirmed that they will not be silent. so i'm just looking at a tweet that's just come in to fill out i can hit other tell you go 1st suffering

in the turret in secondary head silence aside it needed to the articulated guide to go ahead. and just i want to say very clearly we are not paranoid we are not paranoid about what top ins on social media over the past let's say 7 or 8 years really have seen and the dence clear evidence of censorship of accounts being taken down of double standards in the way facebook or twitter it deals with the palestinian news page and israeli propaganda military page for example we've seen those double standards seen the evidence over the past years when we say there are issues and there are problems they can be dismissed as technical issues around the censorship is real because we know the evidence is there and it's always changing and changing and shifting forms but we're not only the censorship is always there against us i guess i am going to share this with you i'm going to we can we can break it down bit by bit we asked facebook to be part of the program they sent us

a very specific statement for us so i'm going to put that up on the screen so you can see at the couple of things that jump out at the end i'm just going to guess to to help me understand what is going on here so facebook spokesperson says we know there have been several issues that have impact the people's ability to share our apps including a technical bug that affected stories around the world an error which temporarily restrict a content from being viewed on the. hashtags page mona lisa sponsors to that technical box so. oh yeah we we never believe in technical bonds because we've been think that these technical bug like for many years ago i mean it did not start like then days ago as we are focusing on the past a few days but obviously it started before and as i started and as i mentioned. there and yes your report that's been going on for

a while so you're looking at these hash that this is just not this one technical that i think let me say that we think if this is a little bit continuous technical bug against palestinian. clearance for science again but if being in that range then on the digital age and we are facing the discrimination let me tell you what we don't have face what we don't have the statements that we're going to debate with a statement to allow facebook says we're so sorry to everyone who felt they couldn't just let's put this up quite well so so to everyone who felt they couldn't bring attention to important events or who felt this was a deliberate suppression of their voice this was never our intention to allow never our intention. yeah that is the problem when they see a statement like that and pretend or act as if there is no technical issue perhaps perhaps there was a technical issue or technical bug but we you know for sure for a fact that major pages had been ticking down and there were notices given out to

those pages saying the speed has been ticking down even though it would have like 5600000 followers for people who want to follow the news from accords from jerusalem from the west bank. from the ground those pages will be taken down with a notice by facebook saying you have been taken down for this reason usually incitement or promoting something that is or isn't like and we know that those pages are completely reporting factual information from ground for from the ground in palestine and suddenly it turns out that the. treatment 3 received in real life is considered to be unacceptable by the facebook standards for example and they accept the request by the israeli government or the lobby group for example to extend that massive major page because it deflects what happens at a st street like source for facts that's what happens my let me give you this final piece that jumped out at me at the facebook statement that was sent specially for

this program so i thank you so i spoke for this we focused on living content that bright savile's to help keep the militants safe while making sure people can keep sharing what matters to them and they also outlined that they have dedicated teams including native arabic and hebrew so they are saying we we are monitoring the situation we are trying to make sure that everyone in all of the communities who are concerned about what is happening right now that that we are on top of this volatile are they and i think there are 2 issues here one there if you have the technical bug you know those algorithms or systems that they news to moderates huge content that scale because you have billions apollo followers or users on this block so you can moderate everything using human moderators right but those systems don't are not don't exist and are not

created in a vacuum and we have been demanding 3 years that there is some sort of algorithmic transparency towards exactly those kind of situations where. interesting enough there are people who are affected by those so called system glitches are oppressed communities are activists are journalists i have not heard of a situation similar to based in other places and at this huge scale of course it happened in other places in india and columbia where there are currently either cope with 19 crises or mass protests but then again why do your systems always tend to disproportionately targets and activists and oppress communities that rely on those platforms and to document human rights abuses and to share their narrative because they don't have access to mainstream media then on the other hand they also actively have

or have developed content moderation policies that are biased and discriminatory and i think we should also. you know go and go along with the argument that this is a result of a system glitch but you have actually policies that. this war portion of you target palestinian speech for example they have the so-called zionist policy which equates or uses the word zionist as a proxy for jewish or israeli let alone the fact that this is a problematic for old view to begin with because also you have none zionist jews there and none zionist israelis read any they're using this policy which and open discussion and have been legitimate political speech without being censored and this is not be only a policy that they have in place so let me and them bring in some let me bring in

some other folks well as it is just because i want to bring in online audience as well who are watching and want to talk to you. but these are some thoughts about let them what do you do where is the accountability. mala july mona you've been giving us so many examples of how social media platforms are making decisions on posters behalf wessex accountability let's take a look. when social media platforms and means your media center reality in which it is they're also greenlighting the brutality and violence of israeli settlers the army and the police as they try to shoot down palestinians killed instantly and bomb palestinians it is a refusal to look at that hard reality and pretend it isn't it rather than move forward to showcase it and do something about it as we've seen this week because in your freedoms are under threat not only in real life would also online 'd on social

media where both are being removed in hysterics and prove also been blocked we're talking about thousands of cases so social media companies are huge importance it's a huge rule they play in order to preserve digital rights and preserve this documentation so we really hope that they will be held accountable but of cells by them police organizations like us international organizations but also by citizens we are getting so many questions about now what to do about this let's start he were rafat good also to sponsons very briefly i don't stream what's concerning if our tweets are being deleted which means no one is free we are controlled by those with power money has stopped free palestine then what do you do rather than make the split 2nd get more people than. yes it's concerning it's very dangerous because they are controlling the palestinian narrative and for that we have no was working

over the last days to the comment and to report to the social media companies and as i'm a as a trusted partners for this as a just the partner for the social media company the most interesting point and most of the content that we have you ported was full of positive i mean really where able to distorted that kind of content and that accounts for such cases yet for such cases they can report to him and we will click to the social media company so we can bring back their content or their account which is suspended or to come back to you going to bring in mark thank you for being on each of appreciate you marcus says i have been sharing everything i can what else can i do to help. very vocal keep sharing and obviously those companies are extremely wealthy companies but unfortunately when it comes to having investing

resources in our region to moderate arab content there is a huge program and a huge gap and that's what we are doing as access now and as a human rights organization working to enforce accountability and transparency for those companies because. it is a global power and a gatekeeper of deciding unilaterally what is permissible and what is not on line i'm just looking at merion but guzzi a tweet that she posted recently important point my account was suspended then v. unstated without me having to do much because you all spoke up for that thank you for being so quick to just be shot thank you for those that offer to your own account for me to use let's do it for others too loudly talking about the power of the social media platforms and negative sense but if we go to a platform of young the platforms of it like to talk there is also a sense of that

a positive way to organize what are you seeing what is this moment showing you as far as digital uses and what is possible to organize absolutely and especially in relation to the events in jerusalem over the us couple of months tick-tock taken stage as the solution to platform that is facing i would see. so for the content filtration moderation is not a strict and and tyrannical as facebook or twitter nazi to talk enables people to post and participate in trends and it's not a job or language it's just videos in palestine we ended up seeing a really a wide range of from material and it's all colliding history in the soldiers palestinians people dancing on both sides and then there's this clash that was how our receiving this for the 1st time and then we're sharing off the stories from

jerusalem a few things being facing facing the police with such bravery for example there was dick's talk videos were still looks pretty like wide fire on to talk of the insects and that really played a huge part in spreading the message of the current movement to a wider audience especially caustic talk as the lists i would believe this content for the creation of moderation compared to other wars we're using right now so what i hear in the law. the law is that the social media platforms that they have pilots do good and palleted do not say go to the patterns what are the message wow what the platform what is a deliberate thank you so much momentum. who as well that the part of today's stream public here my laptop you can follow us anytime to allow. malala. a mum. thank you each of us that's in the questions at this hour see you next.

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hamlet take it we'll bring you the news and current affairs that matter to you to. another day of terror for gazans as israel unleashes a wave of airstrikes on tunnels roads clinics and holes israel's also warned it will attack to government schools which are housing thousands who've lost their homes.