Social media giant Meta apologizes for arbitration of posts by Muslim-Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim regarding the assassination of Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh. The apology was made on Tuesday after a meeting between Anwar’s office and Meta officials summoned to address the removal of the leader’s Facebook and Instagram posts on Haniyeh’s death.
Meta, which owns both Facebook and Instagram, admitted the error in a statement: During the theatre, there was an unfortunate technical hitch when content from the Prime Minister’s Facebook and Instagram Pages was mishandled and deleted. We are happy to inform you that the content has been recovered with the correct newsworthy tag.
‘Suppression of Free Expression’
Hamas’ political leader of the Palestinian resistance group was assassinated in Tehran on Wednesday in what is believed to be an act executed by Israel. Anwar’s posts included a video of Anwar paying condolences over a phone call with a Hamas official. Initially, Meta had claimed to have removed the posts, as they infringed policies preventing the promotion of persons and organizations declared unsafe or dangerous; the office of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim strongly criticized this decision.
The Prime Minister’s office was upset by the move, stating that it amounted to a denial of free speech and called on Apple to offer an apology. Even Anwar himself said that Meta acting cowardly in removing his posts. The Prime Minister who sat with Haniyeh in Qatar in May has been a staunch advocate of Malaysia’s relations with Hamas.
Content Restoration and Apology
After this move, Meta decided to reactivate the deleted content with the anonymity of newsworthiness. After that, the restoration occurred, and later, an apology was issued after a meeting between Anwar’s office and Meta regarding Meta’s actions. This issue demonstrates the current controversies about social media moderation policies in relation to political material and foreign relations.
Anwar’s position about the matter is in line with another narrative on Free Speech and Censorship. This is an indication that his office decreed that it is imperative to continue pronouncing political communication and interaction, which entails the vile, the incipient, or the objective.
This act has unfortunately placed another stumbling block on an already unstable Middle East situation with Haniyeh’s assassination. Currently, Anwar has openly supported Hamas, while Malaysia is on the other side of the divide as other nations consider Hamas a terror group. This geopolitical split determines how content containing Hamas fare on social media such as Facebook and Instagram.
The possible erasure of Anwar’s post and Meta’s apology prove that social media platforms have great difficulties demonstrating a sense of respect for countries’ political speech while simultaneously maintaining their adherence to community standards. Thus, as the digital environment changes, disagreements concerning content regulation and moderation from the perspectives of security and freedom of speech will also grow.
Meta’s declaration that the posts were removed in error and their subsequent attempt to address the situation by reposting the same materials with a new label can be seen as evidence of a continuing struggle between these two priorities. The event simply underscores that social media companies are now part of the global communication arrangements and possess considerable influence on the relations between nations.
