Meta Accused of Bias in Publishing Content About Palestine

A former Meta engineer has filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing it of bias against content related to the war in Gaza, Reuters reports .

Palestinian-American engineer Ferras Hamad, who has worked on Meta's machine learning team since 2021, has filed a lawsuit against the company in California over his dismissal. In his lawsuit, the engineer claims that he faced violations of his rights, including discrimination, and that his dismissal was unlawful.

Hamad said he was trying to help fix technical errors that hide or reduce the visibility of content about Palestine on Instagram. The engineer also reported bias against Palestinians at the company.

Meta removed internal employee messages that mentioned the deaths of relatives in Gaza, he said, and the company also investigated employees' use of the Palestinian flag emoji, Hamad said.

The engineer's lawsuit says Meta did not conduct similar checks on company employees who posted Israeli or Ukrainian flag emojis in similar contexts.

Hamad said the dismissal was related to an incident that occurred in December last year, when an engineer discovered a technical error that prevented posts about Palestine from appearing in Instagram's feed and search results. In one case, Hamad found out that a video by photojournalist Motaz Azaiza of a destroyed building in Gaza was classified by the social network as pornographic.

The engineer said he received conflicting instructions from other Meta employees about whether he should fix the bug, but his boss eventually gave him a written order to fix it.

Hamad also added that Meta's official version was that he was fired for violating a policy that prohibits employees from working on accounts of people they know personally. The engineer claims that the company was referring to Motaz Azaizu, but denies that he personally knows the journalist.

To get the main news faster, subscribe to our telegram and twitter .