Facebook Palestinian and Arab pages face an "intentional decrease" of user-reach

Sada Social Center said that it received a number of complaints from managers of Palestinian and Arab pages on Facebook showing that there is a sharp drop in the rate of access to their posts.

The center said in a statement, a copy of which obtained by Safa, that the rate of access to the posts was dropped by 50% of the general average, and in some cases, it dropped by to more than 80%, resulting in reduced audience engagement with the content, pointing out that these pages are followed by millions of users.

Moreover, the center confirmed that "the sharp drop of user-reach on Facebook was linked to the pages' coverage of normalization deals signed recently between Israel and Arab countries," adding that these pages have received an increased number of reports and warning messages from Facebook related to posts on Palestine and the normalization deals.

"What is happening is an intentional procedure, and this can be easily done through management of data algorithms in Facebook, and it's an action that users will not notice clearly," Sada Social said.

It also underscored that these measures are an infringement and punitive actions against media platforms that covered the issue of normalization with Israel.

It is worth noting that since September 2017, Sada Social has been monitoring the suspension of Palestinian content and accounts on Twitter and Facebook.

Source : Safa