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.

  • NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    104
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

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

  • Mrkawfee@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    88
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    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
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        42
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        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
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year 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.

          • hydrospanner@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            13
            arrow-down
            5
            ·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              arrow-down
              9
              ·
              1 year ago

              Have fun on your authoritarian, heavily censored Reddit clone of an instance, then. The rest of the fediverse will re-embrace rights and move on without you.

          • fatzgebum@feddit.de
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            10
            arrow-down
            4
            ·
            1 year ago

            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
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              8
              arrow-down
              5
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year 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.

            • azuth@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year 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
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year 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.

          • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            7
            ·
            1 year ago

            So you’re all for the “marketplace of ideas” then eh? If corporations aren’t allowed to censor and edit as they please, that means that Nazis are going to be front and center on every social media platform.

            • FrostyCaveman@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              7
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Uhh… Why is that?

              Are you saying in a vacuum those ideas are the most palatable or something? Because that’s what it sounds like

              I really worry about the future when people just throw their hands up in the air and say “well, fuck it, either we become totalitarians or we let nazis take over”. That’s not much of a choice

          • Monkey With A Shell@lemmy.socdojo.com
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            It falls into a place never envisioned by those writing the amendments. When you have defacto monopolization of the public media, or even a major portion of it under your control, then preventing commentary is functionally censorship equal to if the government outright banned it.

            On the other end you have the desire to prevent harmful transmissions to the public space as well. Incitements to violence and propagation of blatant lies serves no good purpose.

            Balancing the two has been the subject of countless lawsuits. The only justification I could see here, given the visual nature of Instagram, would be the potential for gore and violence content. Sometimes showing the ugly reality is needed to let people know the reality rather than a polished sanitized version. Instagram might not be the place for that though given the audience it has.

            By comparison a tame subject, but the case involving George Carlin still holds some sway on matters of what’s appropriate for public broadcast.

            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_v._Pacifica_Foundation

  • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    49
    arrow-down
    11
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    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
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      23
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      if they gave these fucking companies china consequences

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

        • jack55555@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          21
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          Giving criticism to something is a phobia now? lol this place makes Reddit look like the Platonic Academy of Athens.

          • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            7
            arrow-down
            11
            ·
            1 year ago

            Pardon me for getting them mixed up with the racists who go around shouting Tiananmen Square Massacre whenever China gets brought up.

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          That the massacres happened in side streets, largely military vs. local non-student supporters, doesn’t mean that the students weren’t threatened with “move now or there’s going to be blood”, or that those massacres would not be connected to what went down on the square, even if not directly on it. As such your semantic quibbles are meaningless. After the hardliners in the CCP won out when it comes to how to handle the protest the whole party turned away from Deng’s reforms for what about ten years or so, hardliners apparently fearing that if they reformed anything, people would want even more reforms, as evidenced by the Tiananmen protests.

          The whole thing is just perfect proof how stuffy, crusty, and calcified the CCP is in general, and how out of touch with what people actually want.

          • zerfuffle@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Given the reports from Western journalists, this is closest to the truth (though we don’t know if there was an actual threat or if the gunshots around the area were enough threat on its own). China basically treats 6/4 like the Israeli hospital bombing “it wasn’t us, but if it was then we didn’t actually cause it, and if we did then people didn’t actually die, and if people died it was only a few people.”

            This is, of course, in the context of growing corruption in government and increasing influence of American intelligence in the Chinese mainland. We know that some of the pro-democracy activists were funded and supported by American interests and that, at least according to American propaganda, that American psyops divisions were operating in China to orchestrate and escalate the event. 6/4 is a failed coup. American interests wanted to see further Chinese liberalization and tried to apply the same playbook that they had applied before in South America and the Middle East (and later in Ukraine, Pakistan) to China.

            Further economic liberalization was not in the best interests of the people. While Deng’s economic reforms had helped to grow China’s economy in the globalizing economy at the end of the Cold War, it also created a new bourgeois and petite-bourgeois class that China is still grappling with today.

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              12
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Barsoap, typing bullshit

              Is there something in the facts assessment part of my post that you disagree with? I certainly didn’t see you addressing any of it, all you did was quote my editorial opinion and call it bullshit.

              white supremacist opinion about CPC

              Gaaaaah. “Racism is when criticism of the party”. It’s getting boring.Talk to a Chinese person who’s not a party member FFS. How do you even fucking know I’m not Chinese, please tell me.

                • barsoap@lemm.ee
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  There are barely any facts in your word soup.

                  I mentioned, for example, the location of the massacres: The side streets. And the people massacred weren’t students. I said that the protest was dissolved by threat of violence, not violence. I didn’t really get into the struggle inside the party of how to deal with the protest but I did mention the outcome.

                  Are those things correct, yes or no? Is it some “soylent koolaid BS I have been fed”? It may not please your tankie sensibilities but it’s definitely not the “Army rolled over students” line that became a urban myth in the west. This here sums up the press failure quite well, but it would also be mistaken to call it a deliberate propaganda move – those things just happen. It’s carelessness, and China being the authoritarian state it is and constantly denying anything even remotely untowards happened that day in Peking isn’t exactly helping correcting the record.

                  Are you saying that you have full knowledge of Tiananmen incident, while having practically none?

                  Fuck no I’m not a historian. But, again: You actually have to tell me what I supposedly got wrong before I could remedy that issue. Are you here to talk to me and possibly educate, or to shout?

    • rengoku2@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      12
      ·
      1 year ago

      Oh wow now China are being praised.

      Make up your mind, Westerners.

      • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        arrow-down
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I’m not a westerner 😄

        But yeah china’s handling of companies/billionaires is very applaudable. Every other country should be watching and taking notes.

  • vlad@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    44
    arrow-down
    9
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    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.socialOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      57
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        29
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        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.

  • Mandy@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    1 year ago

    Of course, can’t have people facing reality and risking them not consuming content on your awful platform now can we, must capture attention spans at all costs and reality just ain’t cutting it for them

  • Cyberflunk@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    25
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago
    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.

  • library_napper@monyet.cc
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    29
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    1 year ago

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

    • Silverseren@kbin.socialOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      52
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      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. "

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year 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.

  • Obinice@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    Capitalists gonna capitalist, no surprise there.

    To think that a company like Facebook could care less about some dead family members would be a mistake. They only, at best, occasionally pretend to care to ensure they keep the money coming in.

  • Squizzy@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year 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.