Joe Tidy
Appearances
Global News Podcast
Syria's de facto leader says the country is not a threat to its neighbours or the west
We know now that these accusations that have been thrown around social media for the last six months to a year about shadow banning, there may be some truth behind it because, of course, as you say, we looked at the engagement, the metrics that we can count across 20 different news organisations based in Palestinian territories versus 20 in Israeli and 20 in Arabic-speaking and surrounding areas.
Global News Podcast
Syria's de facto leader says the country is not a threat to its neighbours or the west
And we found a big disparity between the engagement that each one got. On the Palestinian pages, there was a 77% drop in engagement. So that's likes, comments, shares, reactions. after October 7th, compared to 37% increase for Israeli pages and 100% increase for Arabic.
Global News Podcast
Syria's de facto leader says the country is not a threat to its neighbours or the west
Well, it's this idea that you can still post things, you can still say what you want on social media, but you're not getting the views, you're not getting the clicks on your videos, that kind of thing. And that's been the accusation against Meta for the last year or so. And it looks like this is another data point potentially pointing that way.
Global News Podcast
Syria's de facto leader says the country is not a threat to its neighbours or the west
But Meta has said very strongly that they have not done this deliberately to silence any particular voice.
Global News Podcast
Syria's de facto leader says the country is not a threat to its neighbours or the west
Exactly that. That's what they've been saying, that we had to bring in what they're calling emergency policy changes to stop a spike in graphic or hateful content. We didn't find any that was particularly different on those 20 Palestinian organisations compared to others.
Global News Podcast
Syria's de facto leader says the country is not a threat to its neighbours or the west
They also said that it's very difficult for them to balance safety on the platform when you've got Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organisation by US, UK and their own policies. But again, we didn't find any overt praising of Hamas on those Palestinian pages.
Global News Podcast
Syria's de facto leader says the country is not a threat to its neighbours or the west
Interestingly, though, one of the things they did say is that if a page posted most about the war or only about the war, they will be demoted in the algorithms of the platform. Because, of course, Facebook doesn't want too much bad news or even news on their platform.