Meta has expressed regret for including the word "terrorist" in the biographies of some Instagram users who identify as Palestinian.
Meta declared that they had remedied an issue "which briefly caused some of their products to give improper Arabic translations".
The BBC was told, "We apologize deeply for this happening."
It has been claimed that the platform has censored content expressing backing for Palestinians during the Israel-Gaza clash.
Some users report that they were affected by a "shadow banning" on Instagram based on their pro-Palestinian posts. This occurs when a platform takes action to prevent posts from showing up in other user's feeds.
Users allege that their 24-hour posts on Stories regarding the conflict have received fewer views compared to other posts and that their accounts are hard to locate in search.
The tech giant admitted that a glitch had impacted Stories, however, they asserted it was unrelated to the topic.
Posts by Instagram user @khanman1996 on X (formerly known as Twitter) and TikTok on Sunday drew attention to a translation error and were accompanied by a screen recording exhibiting this error.
In his bio, he stated that he was Palestinian, along with a Palestinian flag and the Arabic term "alhamdulillah", which, in English, translates to "praise be to God".
Upon selecting "see translation", viewers were offered an English translation reading: "Praise be to God, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their liberty".
@khanman1996 stated that he was not Palestinian but had verified the issue after someone from that community informed him about it.
In a video posted after Instagram resolved the problem, he commented that the malfunction had been present for a minimum of three hours. He also shared that, "in my opinion, it was unbelievable that it was even up at all."
Shadow banning is a situation where online services restrict the visibility of an account or its content to other people, usually if the account is found to be in violation of their rules.
In late 2022, Instagram unveiled a transparency tool giving users the ability to check if any limitations have been imposed on their account, which may obstruct their posts from being recommended to other people.
Bella Hadid alleged she had been censored on Instagram following her comments on the Israel-Gaza conflict last year.
Recently, Fatima Bhutto, a Pakistani writer, shared in an Instagram post that she was covertly restricted from the platform for expressing pro-Palestinian messages, as her followers informed her that they could not access nor locate her Stories in their feeds.
On Sunday, Andy Stone, the communications director of Meta, declared in a post on X that they had detected a glitch that significantly decreased the reach of Stories that contained videos from Reels or content from other people.
He stated that the bug impacted accounts worldwide and had no relation to the content of the material, and that the issue was fixed promptly.
It has been previously documented that Meta has been accused of suppressing pro-Palestinian content.
In May 2021, Human Rights Watch, a charitable organization, leveled an accusation at Instagram claiming the platform had taken down videos, pictures, and commentary related to the crisis.
The social media firm reported that posts had been taken down due to containing "hate speech or symbols", and that it had altered its algorithm. This prompted Meta to commission an independent review into its regulation of the 2021 Israel-Palestinian conflict material.
In September 2022, the consultancy firm Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) released their human rights due diligence report.
It was determined that Meta's conduct had a detrimental effect to Palestinian users' rights to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, political participation, and non-discrimination, thereby impeding Palestinians' ability to communicate information and opinions about their experiences in a timely manner.
BSR declared that it could not find any deliberate racial or ideological prejudice at Meta, yet suggested that the firm should offer more comprehensive explanations to customers whose postings or accounts have been taken down and enhance the linguistic skills of personnel in Hebrew and Arabic.
Meta and TikTok were on Thursday given demands by the European Commission for more details on the steps they are taking to prevent the distribution of untruths and unlawful material following the offensive conducted by Hamas.
Reporting by Imran Rahman-Jones has been included.
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