X, formerly Twitter, suspends hundreds of Palestinian accounts amid Israel-Gaza war

Social media platform X has removed "hundreds" of Palestinian accounts that it claimed were affiliated to Hamas

2 min read

13 October, 2023

X said on Monday that posts from daily active users in Israel drastically increased after Hamas launched a surprise attack on Saturday [Getty]

Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, has removed "hundreds" of accounts it deemed to be "affiliated with Hamas" in an attempt to curb the spread of what it said was "violent and hateful" content online.

The company's CEO Linda Yaccarino said the platform had taken down accounts which had violated policies aimed at stopping the spread of "violent and hateful content" on X. The platform also removed posts that included graphic content, it said.

X said on Monday that posts from daily active users in Israel drastically increased after Hamas launched a surprise attack on Saturday.

Israel has relentlessly bombed the besieged Gaza Strip since then, killing 1,799 Palestinians, including over 500 children, and wounding over 6,000.

Meta, which runs Facebook, said it removed or marked as "disturbing" more than 795,000 pieces of content in Hebrew and Arabic.

Gaza war creates breeding ground for online misinformation

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The Arab Centre for Advancement of Social Media (7amleh) said it documented more than 19,000 cases of hate speech and inciting content in the Hebrew language.

"The Israeli government is taking advantage of the current international sentiment to continue exerting pressure on social media companies to censor the Palestinian narrative and silence voices critical of Israeli policies," 7amleh said in a statement.

The move by X to target accounts reporting on Palestine comes as information from people in Gaza gets more difficult to obtain amid Israel's total siege on its two million residents, which has cut off electricity and fuel, and as Israel keeps foreign media out of the besieged enclave.

On Tuesday, Instagram suspended the account of the Palestinian correspondent of Mondoweiss, while the news site's TikTok account was temporarily taken down a day earlier.

A spokesperson for X did not immediately respond to The New Arab's request for comment.