this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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In a video on Oct. 13, Instagram influencer and photojournalist Motaz Azaiza shared footage of the rubble of an apartment, the site of an Israeli bombardment that killed 15 of his family members.

He turns the camera on himself first, visibly upset, and then shows the scene—the ruin of the building, a bloodstain, a neighbor carrying a child’s body draped with a shroud.

In response, Meta restricted access to his account.

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[–] Mrkawfee@lemmy.world 81 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

There is a wave of censorship and McCarthyist witch hunting against Pro Palestinian voices happening in the West. It is profoundly disturbing and shows how hollow the West's claims to championing personal liberty is.

[–] pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe 16 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is the sort of thing that freedom of speech is supposed to protect, but that idea has become so completely destroyed by Western people that I don't see any hope for people like that poor influencer.

He'll have to make his own website, or move to PixelFed or something.

[–] Cyberflunk@lemmy.world 40 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

No government censored him, capitalism did

[–] Land_Strider@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

At what point will you be considering big corps=government in the U.S.? We all know big oil has tremendous lobby, we all have evidence the military industry that works for profit more than anything else is responsible for most American wars in the last several decades. We all know what manchild is ruining everything he touches and shakes hands with government officials. We all know that Facebook and Cambridge Analytica manipulation machine.

Corporates and capitalism might not directly do legislation or have the executive power, but the U.S. government at least is a for-profit organization for a long while now, and evidently profits are not made with showing oppressed people suffering when you are gaining shitloads of money by selling weapons/investing in the oppressor.

[–] pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe 4 points 2 years ago (4 children)

If freedom of speech can't protect you against corporate censorship then it's meaningless.

[–] hydrospanner@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If freedom of speech can't protect you against corporate censorship then it's meaningless.

That's the biggest load of horse shit I've read today.

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[–] fatzgebum@feddit.de 6 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Any website owner has the right to decide if he wants to remove certain content on his website. That is not an infringement of free speech.

[–] pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Yeah, not in today's world where they are sock puppets for the government.

It doesn't matter because no one else can just infringe on your rights either. Rights are not about just protecting you from government, they're there to protect you from other people.

[–] freeman@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 years ago

It is an infringement of free speech as a concept.

It is not an infringement of US law as the relevant protections are limited in scope to governmental actions.

Obviously US law and even more so the supreme court's interpretations of them are flawed, both on a moral level (big corps should also not be allowed to censor speech) and a logical level (censoring speech is free speech, corps are entitled to human rights).

[–] Mrkawfee@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Except if you have a de facto monopoly on social media which is the digital equivalent of a public forum then you have the ability to effectively curtail free speech.

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[–] Designate6361@beehaw.org 47 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It's almost like social media companies are pushing biased narratives...

[–] Cyberflunk@lemmy.world 25 points 2 years ago (2 children)
  1. Setup a fediverse account anywhere that's not meta, x, or bluesky
  2. Publish your content
  3. Freedom.

It doesn't need to be mastodon, as a matter of fact, Mastodon is kind of a shitty place to publish long-form activity pub posts. Firefish, or WordPress with an activity pub plugin is absolutely perfect for this kind of thing.

[–] Default_Defect@midwest.social 26 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Maybe he wants people to actually see it.

[–] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 8 points 2 years ago

Well apparently that's not happening anyway, so...

[–] Taringano@lemm.ee 14 points 2 years ago
  1. Make absolutely no money and have minuscule audience

  2. Create your own instance Beacuse why not

  3. Crippled in debt due

7.???

  1. Profit.
[–] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 23 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (6 children)

Wow look at all these big horrible corporations that everyone knows are horrible siding with modern day nazism. And all of this could have been avoided if they gave these fucking companies china consequences the instant they started misbehaving instead of doing fucking nothing.

[–] arquebus_x@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago (31 children)

if they gave these fucking companies china consequences

Post a photo of the Tiananmen Square massacre and see what happens.

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[–] library_napper@monyet.cc 22 points 2 years ago (2 children)

How is it that this article doesn't state why his accounts was suspended? What did Meta say the suspension was for?

[–] Silverseren@kbin.social 46 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Because Meta has not given an explanation to him or anyone. Hence why the article says "His Twitter account is still suspended for unclear reasons. "

[–] Nudding@lemmy.world 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What does twitter have to do with this?

[–] Omgarm@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It is also a social medium.

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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 18 points 2 years ago

I'm going to guess that X number of people reported the account in Y hours so it was temporarily banned until some third-world, minimum-wage worker had time to look at it.

[–] vlad76@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

IDK how I feel about this. They age restricted his account because he was showing war and death. If this is happening disproportionately to people reporting one side of this conflicts, which I'm sure it is, then I understand, but on its own this restriction makes sense.

[–] Silverseren@kbin.social 21 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There's numerous examples given in the article by Mona Shtaya on how Palestinian posts and hashtags have repeatedly been filtered out of viewability on social media platforms going back years.

Meanwhile...

Shtaya explained that Israeli settlers used social platforms to incite violence against Palestinians in the West Bank earlier this year. “People on the ground are sometimes beaten, there were towns burned because of this incitement on the platforms,” she said.

Analysis from 7amleh found that an attack on the village of Hawara in the West Bank was precipitated by a deluge of violent content containing the Hebrew hashtag WipeOutHawara, The month before and after the attack, “80.2% of all (15,250) tweets about Hawara included negative content against the village and its residents via the Hebrew-language digital space.”

[–] livus@kbin.social 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

And this is par for the course with the big social media platforms.

Facebook literally spent years hosting incitements to genocide against the Rohingya in Myanmar (despite being repeatedly alerted to it... it later deliberately impeded the ICC genocide investigation) and more recently has hosted incitement against the Tigrayans in Ethiopia.

[–] Silverseren@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago

For those who want to know more. Heck, there's even published papers on the subject.

[–] Squizzy@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

First of all I stand with Palestine here but I acknowledge the hardships that the Jewish people have faced.

That said, this conspiracy theories ,groups and prejudices that target Jewish people are going to have a field day with the likes of this. The whole control the media thing doesn't have to be some backroom dealings when you can just point to this type of thing as an example.

What is actually happening is Jewish people are far better represented in the higher strata of global business and they have huge lobbies around the world. You're just more likely to have people sympathetic to their plight in powerful positions.

[–] NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Meta was throttling pro-palestinian accounts on Threads. I couldn't post anything but pictures for 2 days.

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