Meta 'financially enabling' Israeli settler violence against Palestinians, report says
Meta is “financially enabling” incitement content against Palestinians from pro-settlement Israeli pages, a new report by a social media watchdog has found.
According to the 7amleh, the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, Meta has allowed settler-affiliated accounts and extremist media outlets to generate revenue on its platforms, despite content that violates its own policies, including violent, racist and inciting material targeting Palestinians.
The findings were published on Sunday in a report titled Monetising Occupation: Meta’s Financial Enablement of Settlement Activity and Violent Rhetoric Against Palestinians.
The group said the US tech giant “not only tolerates violent and inciting speech but actively incentivizes its production and spread”, in violation of its own monetisation and content policies.
7amleh added that allowing such content to flourish undermines Meta’s responsibilities under UN principles, international humanitarian law and international human rights law.
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'Palestinians are silenced and denied access, while those promoting their dispossession and dehumanisation are allowed to profit'
- Lama Nazeeh, 7amleh advocacy manager
Content that should be ineligible for monetisation under Meta’s policies includes the promotion of illegal outposts, justification of settler violence, mockery of Palestinians, calls for forced displacement, genocidal rhetoric, and celebration of destruction in Gaza.
In contrast, the report found that Palestinian voices “remain comprehensively excluded from eligibility for monetization on Meta’s platforms, solely based on their geographic location" in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
"This means that Palestinian journalists, content creators, media outlets, and civil society organizations are structurally denied access to economic tools available to others even when their content is professional and policy-compliant."
Nadim Nashif, executive director of 7amleh, told Middle East Eye that Meta has maintained what he described as a decade-long pattern of discrimination and over-moderation of Palestinian content, journalists and media.
This exclusion has included the removal of posts, restrictions, reduced visibility and account suspensions targeting Palestinian creators and pages.
“While over that decade they were allowing, freely, genocidal and violent rhetoric in Hebrew against Palestinians,” Nashif said, adding that the problem has intensified following Israel’s genocide on Gaza.
He added that the company has done little to address the rise in inciting Hebrew-language content, despite “many alerts and warnings” from 7amleh and other watchdogs.
According to Nashif, there is now not only “bias in moderation” but also widespread circulation and monetisation of such content, which he said incentivises the production of further violent material.
“This is a vicious cycle we are witnessing,” he said. “It is something that Meta is responsible for stopping.”
MEE contacted Meta for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Palestinians 'structurally excluded'
This report comes against a backdrop of escalating settler violence and illegal settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, alongside ongoing Israeli bombing in Gaza.
Since the start of the genocide in October 2023, Israel has killed more than 72,336 Palestinians in Gaza. In the same period, Israeli forces and settlers have killed over 1,050 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
As human rights violations against Palestinians spike, Lama Nazeeh, advocacy manager at 7amleh, said that Meta is not only allowing anti-Palestinian rhetoric to remain online, but is also “turning parts of that ecosystem into a source of profit”.
Meanwhile, Palestinians "remain structurally excluded" from monetisation programmes, she told MEE.
In one example cited in the report, posts by Israeli rapper Yoav Eliasi, who goes by the username The Shadow, contain extreme and violent political messaging against Palestinians, including calls celebrating destruction in Gaza and support for settlements.
The account is enrolled in several monetisation programmes, according to the report.
By contrast, Human Rights Watch has previously found Meta guilty of “systemic censorship of Palestine content”, attributing it to “flawed Meta policies and their inconsistent and erroneous implementation, over-reliance on automated tools to moderate content, and undue government influence over content removals”.
The company has also removed the accounts of several Palestinian and pro-Palestinian individuals and organisations.
"This is not only a censorship story. It is a story of discrimination, oppression, and economic exclusion: Palestinians are silenced and denied access, while those promoting their dispossession and dehumanization are allowed to profit," Nazeeh said.
She added that what is unfolding has consequences both on the ground and internationally.
“Meta is helping build a digital economy around apartheid, settler violence, attacks, racist incitement and impunity, while pushing Palestinian journalism, advocacy and testimony further to the margins," she explained.
Nazeeh called on Meta to “immediately end this discriminatory system” and cease enabling far-right Israeli narratives, particularly amid what she described as a wider context of “war, occupation and settler-colonial violence”.
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