Instagram issue apology for labeling some Palestinian user-profiles as ‘terrorist’

Meta has apologized for the inclusion of the term “terrorist” in the profile biographies of certain Palestinian Instagram users, attributing it to an auto-translation bug within their system.

Certain biographies that included the term “Palestinian,” followed by the Palestinian flag emoji and the Arabic expression “Alhamdulillah,” translating as “Praise be to God,” were auto-translated as: “Praise be to God, Palestinian individuals fighting for their freedom.”

TikTok user YtKingKhan recently addressed the matter, stating that different combinations continued to be translated to “terrorist.”

After the video, Instagram resolved the issue. The auto-translation now reads: “Thank God.”

In a statement, Meta said: “We fixed a problem that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations in some of our products. We sincerely apologize that this happened.”

Concerns regarding digital biases and the origin of the issue were raised by critics, such as Fahad Ali from Electronic Frontiers Australia, who called for Meta to be more transparent.

Ali also suggested that Meta should be more open about its moderation policies.

“Often Meta will say that these are the consequence of issues with automated moderation, but it seems increasingly that Palestinian voices are the ones getting caught up in this.”

Following the recent attacks, Instagram users accused the platform of censoring posts in support of Palestine.

In a blog post on Wednesday, Meta said that new measures had been brought in since the Israel-Hamas war to deal with the increase in harmful content being circulated on its platforms.

Meta also suggested that there was no truth in the claim that the company was suppressing anyone’s voice.

According to the company, there had been a bug this week that caused a problem with shared reels and posts not appearing in people’s Instagram stories.

This issue resulted in a noticeable decrease in reach, and it affected all types of posts, not just those related to Israel and Gaza.

Additionally, Meta mentioned that there was a brief worldwide disruption of its live video service on Facebook.