Tech Won't Save Us - The Information War in Gaza w/ Marwa Fatafta

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

Paris Marx is joined by Marwa Fatafta to discuss the ongoing Israeli campaign in Gaza, the importance of social media for sharing what’s happening on the ground, and what listeners can do to support peace and Palestinian rights. Marwa Fatafta is a Palestinian digital rights advocate and researcher. She is Access Now’s Policy and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode:1 in 200 people in Gaza have been killed. >4,600 of the 11,100 dead are children.An Israeli government minster called their actions the “Gaza Nakba.”Instagram inserted “terrorist” into translations of Palestinian bios and removed hospital bombing photos for nudity. Whatsapp generated stickers of gun-wielding children for Palestinian terms.Facebook’s terrorism algorithms removed non-violent Arabic content 77% of the time.7amleh tracked hate speech in Hebrew on social media. WSJ reported Meta’s Hebrew hate speech classifier doesn’t actually work.FAIR detailed Western media bias in reporting on Israel-Palestine.Access Now published a report on the internet shutdowns happening in Gaza.CNN and other Western outlets allow the Israeli army to review their Gaza footage.Al Jazeera, Channel 4, NYT, and WaPo found holes in Israel’s hospital explosion story about.Israel has been actively creating and spreading disinformation.The Israeli parliament passed a bill criminalizing the “consumption of terrorist materials” as dozens are arrested for social media posts.Support the show

It's not only Israeli authorities that are peddling disinformation. The president of the U.S., Joe Biden, has also went on spreading disinformation when he, for instance, repeat said that he saw 40 beheaded babies, which the White House then clarified that they have not seen any confirmed reports of beheaded babies. But the CNN reported that. And then they said, oops, sorry, we could not verify that information. We were misled. But the damage was already done. The dehumanization was already done. The justification of Israel's bombardment and carbon bombing campaign Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Martz, and this week my guest

is Marwa Fitafta. Marwa is a Palestinian digital rights advocate and researcher. She is a policy and advocacy director at Access Now, where she leads their work on the Middle East and North Africa region. Now, as I'm sure you're aware, on October 7th, Hamas fighters breached the fence that Israel built around Gaza and got into Israeli communities and killed, I believe it's 1,200 civilians is the number that we have now. And as a result of that, Israel launched kind of an unprecedented bombing campaign and bombardment on Gaza. We've also seen bombings happen in Lebanon and Syria, and of course, an increase in settler violence in the West Bank, and of course, Palestinian families being forced out of their communities by those settlers. You know, the death toll in Gaza now is over 11,000 people, a very high percentage of those being children and women who are dying because of this. And I felt it essential that we had to do an episode discussing

what is going on in Gaza and in Palestine right now, because it's not just in violation of the Geneva Conventions. It's not just a series of war crimes. It's not just a genocide that's happening, but it's in violation of the most kind of basic moral decency. I don't think it's possible to sit back and see what is happening in Gaza right now and not kind of speak up and say something about it. And, you know, the very least that we can do is to at least speak to somebody who knows a lot more about this than I do. And so that is why I wanted to have Marwa on the show to speak to us about, you know, what is happening in Gaza, to speak to us about the technological angle of this, to see the impact of internet shutdowns and what is happening on social media and the larger

technological apparatus of oppression that Israel has developed and subjected the Palestinian people to. And of course, I spoke about this earlier this year with Anthony Lowenstein. That's episode 176, published on July 13th, if you want to go back and listen to it. On a slightly less serious note, the four-part Elon Musk Unmasked series might be over. But this weekend, on Saturday, November 18th, I'll be doing a live stream where I'll be taking your questions about Elon Musk, the series itself, and anything else tech-related that you really want to ask me about. So that will be November 18th at 1 p.m. Pacific, 4 p.m. Eastern, or 9 p.m. GMT. And of course, to join, you need to be a Patreon supporter. So if you do want to participate in

that live stream and ask some questions, go to patreon.com slash tech won't save us, sign up, and you can join us for it. And of course, for listeners in Australia and New Zealand, I tried to accommodate you as well. So that time is morning your time. So you can also join us if you choose to do so. I hope to see you there. And I look forward to your questions. So anyway, that is all from me. I think it's better to kind of leave this to Marwa and her incredible insights. And I would just say, I know that it can feel kind of powerless seeing all of these videos of atrocities online and the reporting about them. But I think Marwa kind of ends this interview on a bit of, you know,

a hopeful note, or at least an empowering note to say that, you know, you don't need to sit by and just accept that, that there are things that you can do, you know, even as an individual to help the Palestinian cause. And I would encourage you to do that. So it feels so weird to say this usual spiel in an episode like this, but if you do enjoy it, you can leave a five-star review on the podcast platform of your choice. You can also share the interview on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes into making the show every single week, so we can continue to have these critical conversations, these important conversations with people like Marwa, you can

join supporters like John from Staten Island, Rupert from London, Mike in Oakland, Trolls in Denmark, Jarno from Helsinki, and Anton from Germany by going to patreon.com slash techwon'tsaveus, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Marwa, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. I've been really looking forward to speaking with you. You know, unfortunately, the context that we're having this conversation in is, you know, just terrible, right? After seeing what has been happening, you know, starting with the attack by Hamas on October 7th. And then, of course, you know, because of that, seeing the escalation in, you know, the existing kind of occupation and system of apartheid

that Israel has been engaging in, in Gaza and the West Bank. But in particular, you know, we now have a death toll over 11,000 people in Gaza from the bombing campaigns and from everything that Israel has been doing since that attack on October 7th. And so I wonder, I guess, just to start our conversation and to ground our conversation and to ground our conversation, you know, what you have been thinking about or how you have been kind of processing everything that you're seeing over the past month or so since this particular kind of phase, I guess, of, you know, this occupation has been going on. There is no easy answer to this question, but I could say that I think for me, it's been

probably one of the most difficult periods of my life. We have witnessed wars before, particularly in Gaza. As a Palestinian, we somehow are accustomed or used to waking up every morning to news of death, you know, people being killed, detained, injured, maimed. But this round, it's been extremely painful because the level of destruction and mass murder is unprecedented. And it's really hard for me to witness this genocide unfolding before our eyes online and not being able to do much about it, not being able to stop it. And what adds soul to injury is the complicity of the US and Europe and Western leaders and powers in enabling and abetting this genocide and gaslighting us. Today, I live in Germany, and today I saw the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz saying that, refuting, according to him, absurd accusations that Israel is violating international law and asserting that Israel

is a democracy and it's abiding by international law, while we are seeing with our own eyes the atrocities and the war crimes and the crimes against humanity that Israel is committing day in and day out with full impunity. But of course, you know, it's not a time to despair or be reduced to tears, although there's been plenty of tears the past few days or weeks. You know, I work as a digital rights advocate, if you may, and, you know, the conflict or the war has spiraled online also in an unprecedented level from, you know, the level of disinformation and hate speech and dehumanizing content circulating on social media to the censorship of Palestinian voices to the issue of internet shutdowns in Gaza. You know, I've been

busy working on these issues. And I think, you know, the situation highlights more than ever, why the internet is important and essential, and especially in times of war, it's a lifesaver. And therefore, we should try all of our best to keep it as open and as accessible as possible to the people on the ground in Gaza. So it's been a few difficult weeks. Yeah, I can only imagine, you know, it's been hard enough for someone with no connection, you know, no kind of direct connection to Palestine to be watching these things, to be seeing the complicity of our leaders. You know, I'm in Canada and our government has been just as shameful as those in the United States and most of Europe. And just to see these images on our screens of

children being killed and whole neighborhoods being wiped out and just seeing how these statements by people who are supposed to be like our leaders just do not line up with the reality of what we're seeing. And to pick up on your point about the internet, you know, one thing I've kind of been thinking a lot about is I remembered how during the Vietnam War, a lot of people in the United States and in the West were really against that war because they saw what was happening on television. And, you know, I'm sure the media was not perfect in that moment, but they gave people a picture of what was happening that they didn't often get about war before that, right? The images that they didn't necessarily see. And I feel like one thing that has at least kind of cut through that noise or ensured that we're not just kind of relying on what our governments are telling us in this moment

is how social media and the internet, as flawed as those things can be at times, have allowed people on the ground in Gaza to still share what is happening, what their experiences have been during this absolutely atrocious period, so that we can't deny what is going on and that anyone who is trying to justify it can be presented with the facts of what's happening. And unfortunately, those facts are just terrible, but at least they're known and at least people can see what's happening. And I don't know, like hopefully it eventually leads to some justice, even if the bombing is still continuing at this moment.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, maybe we can go on a little journey down the history line. I mean, for us Palestinians, we have been dispossessed from our land. Palestinian villages have been massacred and destroyed and depopulated back in 1948. And over 750,000 Palestinians were expelled. And then the state of Israel was created on top of depopulated, dispossessed, and ethnically cleansed Palestinian towns and villages. And back then, the narrative was, the Zionist narrative was, that this is, you know, a land without a people for people without a land, even though Palestine was, or has been, a pretty

prosperous part of humanity's civilizations for centuries and people from all walks of lives, industries, businesses, cinemas, theaters, farms, you name it, everything it existed. And so the reason why I'm mentioning this is because for us over the past 75 years, it has always been a war over narratives where we want to dispel Israel's myths around Palestine, how it came into existence, or how the Israeli state came into existence. And at what expense? And that was, of course, at the expense of Palestinians being expelled and dispossessed. miles without food, without water, some babies dying in exhaustion, trying to look for a place with no guarantee even for their safety from Israeli bombardment and Israeli snipers. And so for us, we're witnessing the so-called second Nakba, the catastrophe, what happened to us in 1948, but now in multicolour photos on social media. And despite the flow of images and the flow of information of the atrocities being committed

in the Gaza Strip right now, we still see Western leaders and Western media peddling disinformation from the Israeli state about the current events. It's really revolting and also fascinating at the same time to see the discrepancy between people's testimonies and footage and how mainstream or Western traditional media frames those events and how they spin them. And so from that perspective, I think, you know, the internet has been a very crucial tool for people to document atrocities, to document war crimes and crimes against humanity and share it with the rest of the world as painful as they look. They are important to share because otherwise we know for a fact that it's not the CNN or NBC or NPR or the BBC or any of the so self-alleged objective media

organizations are going to objectively indeed report on those events and call a spade a spade. I mean, in traditional media, you know, Palestinians are not killed, they just simply die. And our buildings are not bombed, they just simply collapse. And the perpetrator of those crimes is absent, is simply absent. The use of the passive voice in the English language has never been weaponized and instrumentalized to obfuscate facts and absolve Israel from its responsibilities. So that's why I think, you know, also why the internet has been weaponized in this war and why the Israeli authorities have been specifically targeting and bombing internet service providers, telecommunications companies, infrastructure, and also implementing full

internet shutdowns a few times already over the past few weeks. I mean, we know as an organization that has been working on internet shutdowns for many, many years, we know now that whenever an authority or a government shuts down the internet, it's really up to no good. The sole purpose is to cover the trails of their crimes and to also stop the flow of information and stop people from accessing information, sharing, mobilizing on the streets and dissent effectively against government's actions. Yeah. And I think that is an essential point, right? And there are so many

things in that answer that I want to pick up on and that will kind of inform the conversation that I want to continue having with you. I do just want to kind of go back to what you were saying about the second Nakba, right, that we're seeing in Gaza right now, and just how it adds such insult to injury that so many of the people in Gaza are already people who were pushed out of their communities in the first Nakba, who are refugees from what happened the first time. And now they're being forced to move again, whether that's just to South Gaza or whether they eventually get pushed somewhere else by the Israeli authorities and by the Israeli army. But I do want to pick up on what you were saying there about the internet, right? I think people will have seen the stories around October 27th when there

was kind of the large scale internet blackout preceding the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza after kind of weeks of bombardment and bombing that continues to this day. But there have been kind of blackouts beyond that, internet shutdowns beyond that. And of course, that is not just to say that only the internet has been shut down. Gaza itself has been not only kind of caged for many years, but has been under a kind of complete blockade since October 7th, not allowing medicines and food and things like that in there there other than a few trucks going through the Rafah border with Egypt more recently. So can you talk to us about those internet shutdowns and what the effect of that is when these communication lines are shut

off? Yeah, indeed. So on October 8th, the Israeli Minister of Defense announced that there will be a complete siege on Gaza. So there will be no food, no water, no medicine, no fuel. And then the bombardment campaign started. And since October 9th, basically, we have documented that a number of Internet service providers in Gaza have been going through an Internet shutdown due to the bombardment of their infrastructure. And over the month of October, we have seen that internet traffic has decreased by 80% across the Gaza Strip. And out of the 19 internet service providers operating or providing services in the Gaza Strip, 17 have been, or actually 15 have been going through a complete shutdown also over the month of October. And this is because, I mean, mainly the reasons behind these internet shutdowns are three.

One, as I said, it's the heavy bombardment that led to the partial or full destruction of the infrastructure, including the destruction of fiber, optic fibers, cell towers, and whatnot. But then the second reason, of course, the lack of fuel means that the companies can no longer continue to run their services. Yesterday, for example, the two major Palestinian telecommunications companies, Joel and Paltel, they're part of the same group called Paltel Group, but they've sent a communication sounding the alarm that there will be a complete shutdown of their services and potentially a complete shutdown and information blackout in the Gaza Strip by this Thursday. Today is Tuesday 14th. So on Thursday, and I'm terrible with math, so it will take me a

few seconds to calculate. It would be a Thursday, the 15th, 16th, if fuel is not allowed in. And to date, Israel has been refusing to let any fuel in. So it's really a question of math more than anything that if you don't have fuel, you don't have energy. And therefore, some of those companies have been trying to rely on solar panel. And if that fails, then they have to rely on some emergency energy battery that could only last them for 24 hours. And that would be activated kind of automatically in the absence of if the whole energy sources are depleted, which is, I believe, the case now. And then there is, of course, the, you know, you've mentioned the complete shutdown on the October 27th. And that was as a result of the Israeli authorities simply killing the switch. So, you know, the Israeli Ministry of Communications had said publicly in a kind of a report on its activities during this war, that it is looking into cutting internet and telecommunications access in the Gaza Strip as part of the government's war plan. So we think that it probably was premeditated, and it wasn't the first shutdown, although it's

been the longest so far. The internet was shut down for around 34, 36 hours. I know for a fact that it has resulted in a, it sent shockwaves across the Gaza Strip, but also among Palestinians living abroad. You know, many people have lost completely contact with their families and loved ones inside of Gaza, which to begin with was very difficult. You know, people would send, I don't know, WhatsApp message or try to reach out to their families for days and weeks before they're able to get a reply. You know, seeing this two ticks on WhatsApp was something that Palestinians outside of Gaza,

like it was a sign of life that their families are still alive, despite of the bombardment and the siege. And on the 27th, you know, they were extremely difficult hours. And, you know, many humanitarian organizations and international bodies also said that they've lost contact with their people on the ground, with their staff on the ground, including health workers. The Palestinian Red Cross also said that they've lost access to their emergency room, which means that people who were bombarded, injured, were not able to evacuate or have ambulances to transport the injured to hospitals. Many Palestinians had to resort to using carriages dragged by donkeys to transport the injured to hospitals.

People also did not know which areas were bombarded because they lost access to information, access to the news. So in that situation, I mean, imagine yourself in the Gaza Strip and you hear bombs, some near, some far. You can't talk to your family. You can't have access to the news. You have no clue whether you would be next. And also you have no clue where you can escape to. It's an absolute nightmare that I do not wish even upon my enemies. So there was a strong backlash from international organizations

and even the White House kind of shamelessly claimed that they were the ones that pressured the Israelis to bring it back. I wouldn't want to give the White House any credit, but there was a strong backlash from many organizations, including civil society. And I think Israel, since then, has been implementing kind of partial shutdowns. On October 1st, there was a shutdown for at least nine or eight hours overnight. There was also a shutdown in the northern part of Gaza, where there is currently a military operation. There was also a shutdown on November 5th. And again, if fuel is not allowed in by this Thursday, the possibility of having another information blackout is very real. What you described there, you know, about not being able to communicate with your family,

but you know, anyone outside of Gaza being able to communicate with their family is just so hard to imagine. And then, you know, thinking about being in Gaza and hearing and seeing these bombs dropping around you and not being able to access the information on what is actually going on or being able to even contact like medical authorities or an ambulance just seems absolutely harrowing, right? I want to briefly ask you about something. I was reading a report by Hamlet, you know, an Arab organization around social media, and they were saying that it's not even just the kind of occasional cutting of connectivity by Israeli authorities, but there's also kind of a longstanding ban on allowing more advanced technologies to help telecommunications technologies into Gaza essentially means that anything that goes into the Gaza Strip must be approved by an arm that reports to, it's a military administration that reports to the Israeli Ministry of Defense. And they have to approve also materials for infrastructure. And basically it's restricted around materials for civilian use. Now, under those conditions and under that blockade, a lot of the needed equipment and technologies for providing BD and reliable internet access and telecommunications access has been denied under allegations of possible dual use. That's why in the Gaza Strip right now, people still have access to 2G mobile networks.

In the West Bank, people have access to 3G networks. And the entire Palestinian communications or ICT infrastructure is controlled by the Israeli authorities. They decide on the electromagnetic sphere and spectrum and the allocation of those. They have full control over the radio frequencies. They have full control over the import and the installations of cell towers and technology. And for a long time, you know, the Palestinian Authority and also telecommunications companies have been negotiating for 12 years to have Israel allowing access or allowing these Palestinian operators upgrade their mobile networks from 2G to 3G in the West Bank.

And it was only allowed in 2018. And since then, there have been negotiations and campaigns to allow Palestinian operators to go to 4G. So basically simply to catch up with the rest of the world. And in Gaza, it's like one step behind still because of the military blockade

that has been placed on it since 2006. Meanwhile, here in North America and Europe, you know, we have 5G and are talking about 6G, right? And Gaza is still stuck with 2G. You know, it shows the inequity right there and that they can't even make those decisions for themselves. You know, we've been talking about the internet shutdowns, right, and the very basic post about what they've been subject to by Israeli authorities under the apartheid system that exists there. Can you talk to us about kind of that history around how social media networks treat Palestinians and, you know, just posts by Palestinians and I guess Arabic content more generally, and also what we've been seeing kind of in this moment from those companies.

Yeah, I mean, so social media platforms have been a critical civic space for Palestinians to share their stories, to share their narratives, to debunk Israeli disinformation, to record the realities, their realities under Israeli occupation and system of apartheid, and especially in a context where Palestinians are not platformed on traditional media and where there are existing and very clear biases about how media reports on Palestine and Israel. Yeah, I mean, but unfortunately, pretty much similar to what, you know, everything else we've seen, social media platforms have disproportionately been targeting Palestinian content. Palestinian voices have been for years now censored, and particularly during times like

these, during times where violence surges, times where Palestinians need social media to report and share information as widely as they can. In 2021, for instance, when Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah, which is a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, took to social media and to the streets to protest the possibility of forced evictions from their homes by Israeli authorities. Social media companies almost immediately clamped down on that campaign. And we saw like hundreds upon hundreds of stories that carried the hashtag safe Sheikh Jarrah were automatically removed. People were not able to go on live stream. They were not able to comment on posts. We're not able to share content with, we saw also hashtags being blocked.

It was pretty egregious back in 2021. And now two years later, with the genocide being committed in Gaza, we see the same type of repression on Palestinian content. Again, since October 7th, a number of Palestinian journalists and human rights defenders have been suspended on TikTok, on Instagram, on Facebook. Again, content being automatically and erroneously removed under their anti-terrorism policies. I'll give you just a few very interesting examples, just that expose the level of censorship and also the arbitrariness, the arbitrary nature of it. When the Al-Ahli hospital was bombed, which was quite shocking news for people around the

world, Instagram started taking down footage from that bombing under their so-called sexual activity and nudity policy. So the algorithms thought that the dead bodies of Palestinians that were killed in a hospital bombing were nude bodies. It's very insensitive, but also it shows you that when you're sharing information in real time, how the arbitrary enforcement or over-enforcement of some policies can hinder people's ability to express themselves and access information freely. Other examples include, they shut down one of the most popular Palestinian media organizations, Al-Quds News Network. It has over 10 million followers on Facebook. And early on, Facebook shut down and I think permanently

banned the outlet from the platform. And they've tried to create a couple of like alternative pages and they also were shut down. Yeah, Palestinian journalists from Gaza who are using Instagram to report from the ground have been hacked, have been temporarily suspended. There is also this so-called shadow banning, which everyone who's been speaking up on Palestine and Gaza has probably experienced, including myself, where your outreach has been significantly reduced. You feel like you're speaking to the void. No one is seeing your content. No one is engaging with it.

In some instances, people's profiles disappear altogether. You can't even find them on the search function on the platform. These companies, despite pushback from civil society and demands for transparency, they still deny that all of that censorship is intentional. They deny their discriminatory policies and the way they apply them. But, you know, if you look at previous examples or take a similar context of military occupation, for instance, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, you'll see a completely different response. You'll see tech companies going above and beyond their policies and commitments to ensure that Ukrainians can express themselves freely and they can access information securely by making exceptions to their policies. So, you know, in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Meta even went on to allow an exception for Ukrainians to say death to Putin and death to Russians, which they then pulled back after Russia

essentially threatened to add Meta as a terrorist organization. But, you know, if you put these two contexts in juxtaposition, you'll see how in one case platforms censor and over-remove content while denying that they're doing so. And at the same time, make a number of exceptions for people that they think their rights are worthy of protection and respect. Yeah, it's been really notable to see that divide between how, you know, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been treated, and then how kind of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza has been treated. You know, just to pick up on what you're saying, you know, Facebook also allowed the praise of Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov battalion, you know, which was previously not allowed. And just to pick up on what you were saying about back in 2021, about the platforms and their treatment of Palestinian posts, I remember one of the most egregious examples in that moment was them treating posts about the Al-Aqsa Mosque as

terrorist posts and removing them. And of course, over the past month or so, we've seen platforms like Instagram look at Palestinian in people's bios when it's next to Arabic language and auto-translate it with the word terrorist and then having to apologize for doing so. We've also seen, of course, WhatsApp create generative AI stickers of children with guns, I believe it was. And there was also, to go back to Ham And, you know, there was also, you know, to go back to Hamlet, this organization, they looked at posts that were being made on social media,

and again, found that, you know, kind of hate speech posts in Hebrew have proliferated since October 7th, you know, hate speech against Palestinians. And this kind of stuff has not really been reined in by these major platforms and by ex-Twitter in particular. But meanwhile, you have this kind of aggressive censorship of Palestinians and the types of things that they post on social media. Indeed. I mean, also to add to that, the types of content restrictions we see, some of it is really ridiculous. And I say ridiculous because I can't find any other adjective to describe the level of censorship we see on social media. For instance, Palestinian flags are automatically hidden on Instagram comments.

Why? Because Instagram finds them offensive. I think it's blatant racism and dehumanization, because assuming that a Palestinian flag is violent or is offensive to others, it's a flag. Why would any flag be offensive to anyone? And even if it is offensive, freedom of expression means that people have the right to share such materials or content without being censored or undermined. But to your point on like how disinformation and hate speech is flourishing on the platform, the issue when it comes to content moderation in the context of Palestine is it's a twofold problem. And it's really like two faces of the same coin. We have this over-moderation,

like zealous over-moderation by the platform's algorithms of political content under their so-called anti-terrorists or terrorists and violent extremism policies. Mind you, so far, everything that has been leaked around those algorithms is not promising. From the fact that those systems are poorly trained in Arabic languages, they detect content and remove it erroneously one of the leaks from Facebook researchers, an internal memo said that Facebook's anti-terrorist algorithms that detect and automatically remove terrorist content has falsely removed nonviolent Arabic content 77% of the time.

And let's face it, I mean, platforms do rely on automation most of the time. Very recently, under the EU's Digital Services Act, the first transparency report was out and platforms were asked to provide numbers on the number of their content reviewers, but also on how much they use automation for their content moderation decisions. And it was quite astounding to see the numbers. For Meta, for instance, they use automation up to 94% of the time, or actually, to put it more accurately, 94% of their decisions on the platform are automated. And it's 98 on Instagram. So they are relying heavily on those automated tools to detect and remove content.

And again, to emphasize that most of the time, it's erroneous and arbitrary removal. Hence why we see all this censorship. And speaking of algorithms, one thing we found out back in 2022, last year, after we insisted on Meta conducting a postmortem investigation into content moderation actions in May 2021, we found out, or the Human Rights Due Diligence Investigation commissioned by Meta, asserted that the company did not have any classifiers for hate speech in Hebrew. So all the barrage of hate speech and incitement to violence in Hebrew language

hurled at Palestinians and Palestinian users have been flourishing on the platform because there are simply no tools for the company to detect it and remove it. And, you know, after the investigation, Mata said that they've now built in new classifiers in Hebrew. But another leak in the Wall Street Journal from a few weeks ago said that essentially that those classifiers are not really operational. So this is to say that, you know, these platforms, and that's not a surprise, I guess, for anyone listening to the podcast, that the companies have not invested in an equitable manner in different parts of the world. They still prioritize the US and the English language as a market. And, you know, the rest of the world, including Palestine, where it's an insignificant market by every indicator and measure,

you know, they have zero investments. And also they have zero political will to change any of this. You know, for them, I guessestine is a media issue to to handle you know it's a every few years maybe or every year there is a surge in violence palestinian content is removed civil society is upset and you know and there are media articles scandalizing and criticizing the platforms but then things move on to the next, the new cycle changes. And we are in the same, you know, we're locked in the same pattern of over censorship, no serious change in those policies or the way the companies informs them.

They simply don't care. Let me put it this way. I know it's not a sophisticated answer, but they simply do not care. They do not care. I think what you're saying there is really important though, right? Because it's on one side, the economics of it, right? There's not a whole lot of profit in ensuring that kind of a Palestinian user base is happy with what they're doing, but is also kind of represented properly. But then on the other side of things, we know that the Israeli authorities have a lot of resources that are dedicated to how they are portrayed on social media, but also Meta are very open to those sorts of things and are very responsive to it in a way that they're not to Palestinian organizations who would try to do something similar, who have far fewer resources to actually do that kind of the larger picture of not just what happens on social media, but on Western media reporting as well. Because one of the narratives that we had very early in October, as this was kind of taking off was that there's so much miss and disinformation spreading at the moment, it's hard to know exactly what is going on, as though it's this completely kind of depoliticized

thing that there's just all this information out there and we can't weed through it. And oh my God, I don't know why this is. It's just technology and social media platforms. And it's like, okay, yes, there's a lot of that information out there, but why is that the case? You know, why is it so hard to get accurate information in Gaza? You know, it's because that there are communication shutdowns. It's because the Israeli authorities are keeping journalists out of Gaza so they can't get in and see things accurately. And now that they are allowing journalists in with the IDF, they need to submit all their footage for review to the Israeli army authorities before it can be published.

You know, organizations like CNN have been very open about the fact that they've agreed to these terms. So I wonder how you think about this question of misinformation and disinformation and kind of the power imbalance that is very clear in the type of information and the type of false information that has been spreading online, you know, over the past month or so, as Israel's bombing campaign has continued in Gaza? Yeah, I mean, Israel has a track record of spreading disinformation and war propaganda. For many Palestinians and observers, it's almost like they use the same playbook all the time. There's an atrocity committed and they plant a complete hoax information, which then causes this massive debate about did it happen? Did it not happen?

Who was responsible for it? And the narrative shifts completely from the actual atrocity and the human suffering that it caused to a question of who was responsible for it. We saw that in the murder of the Palestinian American journalist Shirin Abu Akleh, who works for Al Jazeera or worked for Al Jazeera. She was shot dead in Jenin. And the first reaction from the Israeli government online was to post a video claiming that she was shut down or she was gunned down by Palestinian militia. they've quickly debunked that piece of disinformation with evidence that actually the location or the footage that Israel shared were kilometers away from where the journalist was actually standing. And that playbook then evolved. We saw the same playbook used in the bombing of Al-Ahli Hospital. I mean, the bombing happened, which was quite horrific and harrowing.

And the thing that they've done is they posted a footage online that showed the, of course, they claim that it's a failed Palestinian rocket. They first said, I believe it was Hamas, and then said, again, it's Islamic jihad. And the footage was called, meaning people called them out. People are not idiots. So they said, well, this video has completely the wrong timestamp on it. They deleted it. And then they came back with another footage that was recycled from another conflict, also called out and deleted it.

And then they posted another footage and alleged intercepted call between two Hamas members in which they said that the rocket was fired by Islamic Jihad and landed in the hospital. And the narrative, the conversation, the debate online and offline shifted from the actual atrocity to who did this. And with that, of course, Israel evades full responsibility. And this round, we do not have reporters on the ground. There are very, very few. I think Al Jazeera probably is the only media, global media organization that has reporters on the ground at the moment. And that's why the Israeli authority wants to shut down its office and why Secretary Blinken also reportedly had asked the prime minister of Qatar to have Al Jazeera tone down its coverage in Gaza.

And because we don't have reporters on the ground, there's also less and less footage being shared on social media by citizen journalists and bystanders. It becomes hard to verify. So this is to say that information vacuums, of course, breed disinformation because who is there to investigate and to verify the Israeli claims around those war crimes and atrocities. It's hard and it's harder when Western media entertain and publish those thoughts without any scrutiny or proper or due investigation from their side. I think there is a question for later, maybe not now, but once there is a ceasefire and the bombing stops and the dust settles, whether there will be an investigation into the war crimes and crimes against humanity that were or have been committed or are being committed in the Gaza Strip and whether Israel would allow for such an investigation to take place. They want us to take their word for it. And some of those claims are, to be honest, are quite ridiculous and even an insult to anyone's intelligence. Yesterday, for instance, we saw footage from the Israeli army from a

children's hospital in Gaza, the Rantisi Hospital, in which they alleged it was used as a Hamas command center where they held Israeli hostages. And they're using diapers and a baby bottle, they found as an evidence that there were hostages held there. Well, they are in a children's hospital where many displaced Palestinian families were taking shelter. And then there's, of course, this whole thing about the calendar meme, where they found a handwritten calendar hang on the wall. And they said, oh, look at this Hamas terrorist guard list, where it's simply with their names on it, where it's simply a staff shift calendar

with the names of the week written on it in Arabic. Today, I saw that CNN ran with the story. And for the American public or for non-Arabic speakers, you would take this probably for granted. Why would you question the CNN running these allegations without any scrutiny or proper investigation? And to your point, you know, they have agreed to the IDF's conditions that everything they will say will, of course, have to be approved by the military censor in Israel. This is the disinformation we see now. One thing I also want to say, which I have not

seen before, is that so many of those open source intelligence accounts on social media have been active in peddling and amplifying disinformation. Some of those accounts have been quite active in the context of russia ukraine so they've built an audience and probably credibility to their reporting and now they're amplifying israeli disinformation and if you're not careful and very critical of every piece of information you see online you'll probably fall for that propaganda that's a really important point and one I hadn't even included in my notes. So I'm happy that you brought it up. And I just want to kind of add

to what you were saying there. You know, when it comes to the Al-Ali hospital bombing, you know, obviously Al Jazeera questioned the Israeli narrative right away. We also had Channel 4 News in the UK produce a report, several reports kind of calling into question the supposed evidence that Israel presented to dispute the narrative that it had caused that bombing. The New York Times also published a report calling into question some of this evidence. And there was one other Western media organization that I'm forgetting off the top of my head, but just to show that even in this case, it was very much called into question, but the kind of broader narrative that Israel had not caused this was allowed to stand, right? And

because they had done enough to kind of sow doubt in the minds of the public and in the minds of so many. But then on top of that, of course, you have, and you know, what you were saying about the kind of Arabic calendar, it does seem to be that the Israeli authorities rely on the fact that, you know, kind of a Western public does not know Arabic. And so uses just the Arabic language itself to, you know, kind of deceive people, whether it's, you know, obviously, Prime Minister Netanyahu has been saying things frequently, but the president as well, Isaac Herzog, has frequently gone on television and held up kind of issues of Mein Kampf and, you know, support supposed kind of instructions about creating bombs that was supposedly found on Hamas terrorists in Israel. And again and again, there's this supposed evidence that comes out that is very quickly debunked when Arabic speakers can see it and say, like, what are you talking about? This

is not reflective of what you're saying at all. And also kind of videos, and as you say, kind of the supposed phone call recording that was included in the hospital evidence that very clearly shows accents that are not kind of Arabic or Palestinian accents that don't line up with what the Israeli authorities are trying to claim. I didn't want to say, you know, as difficult as it is now, and sometimes even infuriating to see the gaslighting of the atrocities being committed and the justification of Israeli war crimes, I find it sometimes entertaining to watch Israeli propaganda because some of it is really quite unbelievable. You know, that nurse or that actor, you know, terrible actor, I really advise her to switch careers, pretending to be a Palestinian nurse in Al-Shifa hospital, and then saying that

she has to do a surgery for a five-year-old child who has a fracture, but Hamas took all the morphine and that they're Hamas fighters in the hospital. I mean, it is funny, but it just shows you the level of depravity that while the hospital is currently besieged and there are people dying, patients dying because lack of electricity, lack of medicine, succumbing to their wounds in the most probably agonizing ways, you have Israeli authorities resorting to these very cheap and DYI types of disinformation to justify their attacks on hospitals. And mind you, this whole discussion around, you know, Hamas using hospitals as command centers, or there are tunnels underneath the hospital, that still would not justify the targeting of innocent civilians and the attack on hospitals,

including maternity wards, the shelling of maternity wards, the shelling of intensive care units. I mean, none of that is justified. But then again, we're here dealing with not only a war on the ground, but also war on social media and a war of narratives. And that's why for the Israelis, it's very important to add this fog of war around what they're doing. And also, it's not only Israeli authorities that are peddling disinformation. The president of the US, Joe Biden, has also went on spreading disinformation when he, for instance, repeat said that he saw 40 beheaded babies, which the White House then clarified that they have not seen any confirmed reports of beheaded babies.

But the CNN reported that. And then they said, oops, sorry, we could not verify that information. We were misled. But the damage was already done. The dehumanization was already done. The justification of Israel's bombardment and carbon bombing campaign in Gaza is done. You know, I think it's important here to highlight that it's not only Israeli authorities,

but there's also, quote unquote, so-called democratic leaders taking part in the spread of disinformation. It's not just some rogue actors, you know, deliberately misleading the public. And also to add one more example, Joe Biden had also questioned the number of casualties on the Palestinian side, which is quite inhumane considering the number of casualties and the Ministry of Health are not to be trusted because it's a Hamas-run public entity, which led them to issue an over 200-page report with every single

name of a Palestinian who'd been killed, together with their age, gender, and their ID number, in case those who are doubtful of the numbers can go and cross check with the civil registry. It's quite dehumanizing. And also, it's not only about posting a video or some piece of disinformation online, but it's about how you weave a narrative and how you use and construct different parts of information to build this narrative that Palestinians are terrorists, Hamas is using hospitals and schools as military bases, and therefore it is okay to carpet bomb the entire Gaza Strip, no matter how many Palestinians are killed, including children and women and men. Yeah, and it's clearly against the Geneva Conventions to do something like that. It also

shows, you know, whether it's with Western leaders or liberal commentators or, you know, the Western media, kind of how the bar of evidence is so much different when it comes to Israeli claims versus Palestinian claims, right? You know, they're happy to repeat the mis- and disinformation when it comes from Israeli authorities, but will immediately question accurate figures when it comes from, you know, the Palestinian side. And it was even the UN had to come out and say that they trust the Gaza Ministry of Health numbers. We know that the State Department itself considers those numbers to be trustworthy, even though Antony Blinken kind of publicly questioned them and the president did as well. And I think that your point about dehumanization

is really important as well, right? Because we have seen a lot of that when it comes to Palestinians, you know, over the past month and long before, of course, as well. And on top of that, kind of the videos and posts, as we've been talking about spreading on Israeli social media, you know, kind of the, the Pollywood conspiracy theory that there are, you know, all of these Palestinians who are just pretending to die and, and be injured and stuff in Gaza and the West bank. And, you know, on top of that, just people making posts, joking about the fact that Palestinians in Gaza don't have access to water and electricity and kind of joking about and celebrating those things. It's really disgusting to see. I want to ask you, you know, one thing to kind of close this conversation about social media in particular is read posts that are supportive of the Palestinian

cause can be charged and receive up to a year prison sentence for that. And that's kind of Palestinian citizens of Israel, but also Jewish Israelis who also don't support what their government is doing. What do you make of kind of the increasing move toward authoritarianism within Israel and the specific law criminalizing the use of social media if you happen to interact with anything that's pro-Palestinian? Yeah, I mean, early on since October 7th, the Israeli authorities have clamped down on freedom of expression within Israel proper. And not surprisingly, the majority of people arrested, prosecuted, and detained are Palestinian citizens of Israel, in East Jerusalem, Palestinian residents. You know, there've been reports of hundreds of people being stopped by

Israeli authorities and the police on the streets and asked to share their devices in which, you know, the authorities can scroll through people's posts, messages and see what pages even they follow. And according to a Palestinian human rights organization, Adela, there have been, I think, at least 100 and 140 cases of investigations where people have been detained and investigated for something they've said or shared on on social media but coming to your point on 8th of november the israeli kineset passed a temporary amendment to their anti or counter-terrorism law of 2016, where it introduced a new offense, a new crime that prohibits the consumption of materials that can praise or support acts of terrorism or terrorist organizations. It also gave the Israeli Minister of Justice to be able to designate new groups. So this amendment,

the new crime of consumption is tied to consumption of materials from Hamas and ISIS, but the Israeli minister of justice can add to that list in agreement with the Israeli Minister of Defense and the approval of the Knesset committee. It's pretty dangerous. I mean, you see there, it's a straight weaponization of law to stifle dissent and to crush any Palestinian form of expression or solidarity with Gaza. You probably saw the video of the Palestinian woman detained from her house because by the Israeli police, and they've read out loud the charges that she was facing, including spreading and praising terrorist organizations, supporting, posting content

that incites the violence and supports terrorism. And also she was investigated for being involved in a terrorist organization. And why? Because she changed her WhatsApp status and wrote that may they be victorious or something like that, you know, a vague reference. It could be to anyone. She could also be, could have, you know, referred to Palestinians in Gaza, not necessarily Hamas. There are many, many stories like that where Palestinians have been detained. There was a Palestinian student in a university in Haifa where she posted an Instagram story of her making shakshuka and saying that this is the shakshuka of victory. And she was also detained on similar allegations. And the Israeli authorities

have been very, very clear. They said that they will open an investigation into any type of content, even if it's a WhatsApp or a Instagram story that disappears after 24 hours. And they've also banned any pro-Palestine solidarity. And people are afraid, they're petrified as a matter of fact. They can't share their opinions online. They can't go out on the streets to express themselves. They feel threatened in their schools and their universities and in their jobs because anyone also can report on them. Because here is a question of who's watching you, right? Who's watching you on social media? It could be the authorities,

but it also could be your classmate, your employer, your neighbor, anyone on your list of followers can report you to the authorities. And we all know that the Israeli justice system does not serve Palestinians well. And there it is really designed to crush Palestinian expressions of identity and Palestinians' ability to express themselves. So it is terrifying.

The interesting thing here to see how this will evolve is that how these laws will be applied to Jewish Israelis, because as I said, it's been mostly Palestinians impacted by such measures. But now we hear also reports of Jewish Israelis being prosecuted or detained because of things they've expressed online. And one thing also to remind everyone is that this law, which is quite draconian, has been the law under which Israel designated six prominent human rights organizations. And so one thing that I'm concerned about is how potentially, if the situation deteriorates, the Israeli authorities can also prohibit the consumption of reports and documentation and content from these leading and credible human rights organizations in the West Bank.

I mean, the same authorities that can decide that a human rights organization is a terrorist organization can also prohibit the consumption of their work and their material if they want to. So none of this is assuring. Let me put it this way. It's quite concerning thinking of how this can evolve further. Yeah. And to be clear, it's not just Palestinian human rights organizations or Arab human rights organizations. The Israeli state and the Israeli government, as I understand, has been quite hostile toward Israeli human rights organizations as well, like B'Tselem and Yesh Din, who have called, you know, what they're doing in the West Bank and Gaza system of apartheid, right? Very, very clearly. And I don't think that can be denied

at this point. And on top of that, the genocide that's ongoing in Gaza. I want to ask as well, you know, this notion of kind of Israel technological superiority has been really important, not just for the image of Israel globally, you know, and kind of the interaction of tech companies with it, but also the idea that, you know, it's so hard to push back against Israel because it has this surveillance power. It has this kind of military technological might that is so difficult to push back against from, you know, kind of the perspective of Palestinians who are under occupation and, you know, who don't have nearly the same degree of tools. And I think that that narrative was really punctured on October

7th. You know, whatever you feel about that event, it's hard not to deny that by being able to breach the high-tech security fence and the fact that Israeli authorities were not able to detect the fact that Hamas was planning this attack on them because they were using analog communication methods that could not be picked up by their kind of digital surveillance tools and were also kind of their human surveillance was not as reliable as they thought. I guess, what does this do for the narrative of Israeli technological supremacy and kind of the continued way that Israel uses its surveillance technologies and whatnot

to buy kind of support abroad by selling those to other governments that want to spy on their citizens? I think the name of this podcast is a good caption for that event, that tech won't save anyone. But yeah, I mean, Israel has relied on its so-called homeland security industry. It prides itself on being a startup nation. It prides itself in being the jurisdiction that houses many so-called unicorns, including spyware outfits and surveillance companies like NSO Group and others, and has used its occupation and has used its so-called experience in homeland security

to sell that technology to governments around the world. Of course, sell it as tools that are battle-tested and field-tested. I remember one of the Israeli biometric surveillance companies that provides biometric identification tech in the West Bank, but also to airports around the world, in which they also refer to their technology as, yeah, field tested in one of the most challenging security contexts, referring again to the occupied Palestinian territories. And as you said, like the events of October 7th, just it shattered that image. And right now, I think some of the Israeli

buyware companies like NSO Group are trying to utilize or seize the moment to brand themselves as forces for good or as tech for good. You know, for example, a couple of Israeli companies said that we, including NSO Group, that they want to help the Israeli authorities locate and find the hostages. There are also reports that it's trying to seize the moment to remove the black listing by the U.S. Department of Commerce and attempt to position themselves around the lines of we are indeed very important or we sell very important tools for governments, concerned governments to combat and disclose terrorism and terrorist attacks. But again, it's important to question this entire pipeline and this entire military industry complex and where and how that technology comes from and how it is tested and

how it evolves and also at what expense. I've said before, and I want to share here again, that I think Israeli tech should be treated like blood diamonds because the inception and the prototyping and the testing of those technologies often involve the violation of Palestinians' human rights. Palestinians do not consent to the use of these technologies on them as individuals and as communities, whether it be spyware, whether it be biometric surveillance tools, whether it be automated weapons. We have not consented to the use of these technologies or the testing of them on us. And even now in Gaza, in terms of traditional weapons, some doctors say that some of the injuries they're treating, they have no clue. They have not seen burns or types of injuries

like this before. So it pulls the question of what tools are in arms and weapons, whether it be cyber or traditional or chemical, the Israelis are using on Palestinians. And the importance for governments around the world and companies that import and use these technologies to conduct proper human rights due diligence, which, I mean, for me, you know, it's easy to draw the lines and the dots between those technologies and how they're being weaponized against Palestinians. But maybe for others, that is not as visible. And so it's important to interrogate that entire supply line and understand how the purchase and the use of such technology can further undermine Palestinians' rights and entrench their oppression under Israeli apartheid

and occupation. Yeah, a very important point, right? To recognize how these technologies are used, how they're developed. It's long overdue to question these things and not to allow these technologies to be rolled out because not only are they being developed under apartheid, are they being developed on an occupied population, but these are surveillance technologies, right? These are biometrics technologies. These are military technologies.

These are not things that we want to be rolled out in our societies and that we should be kind of pushing back against, right? And I think that brings me well to my final question that I wanted to ask you. We could talk for another hour and a half and there are a million things I could ask you about and talk to you about. But one of the things that I think many people will have felt over the past month or so is looking at these videos, whether they're on Al Jazeera or Western media channels or on the various social media that they are consuming and seeing just death and destruction and feeling that powerlessness,

that all of this tragedy is happening and it feels like there's nothing that you can do to contribute to the end of it. And so I wonder, you know, in the face of that, is there anything that people can do? Or how do you feel that people might be able to respond in a positive way in the face of those atrocities and that tragedy? There's a lot that people can do. And I want listeners to know that you have so much power, more than you think you have. And every little act of solidarity, or every act of solidarity, no matter how big or small, is extremely, extremely important. People in Gaza have been calling for a ceasefire. They want the ceasefire, and we're demanding a ceasefire. So you can also continue demanding a ceasefire. You can go out on demonstrations that are now happening every weekend in many capitals around the world. You can write to your representatives. You can call your representatives. It's the people that you've elected and demand that they call for a ceasefire. You know, you can help amplify Palestinian voices

on social media, despite the censorship and despite the flood of disinformation and dehumanization we see online. I think the reason why we are having this conversation, the reason why many people are out protesting on the streets, the reason why people are even bursting into conferences and meetings and even train rides where these officials are, is because of people sharing on social media. So continue sharing, continue amplifying Palestinian voices, raise and share facts, testimonies from the ground. Sadly, there's less and less coming out. That's why every voice and every piece of information matters. Do not give up. Do not lose hope. And again, you know, I really want to emphasize that

anything you do is important. Anything you do is powerful. And we should continue adding and building pressure, especially where we live here in Western capitals, to call out the hypocrisy, to call out the complete disregard to human rights and human life and demand that Palestinian innocent lives are saved. I think that's a really important way to end this conversation, to let people know that there are things that they can do, right? You know, social media has its problems, but it's not going away. So especially in moments like this, use it positively where you can, right? To raise up these voices so that people know what's going on. And, you know, I know in some parts of the world, political leaders have been warning people against going out on marches in support of Palestinian rights and the end to an occupation and for a ceasefire in this stage of the conflict. I was out in Montreal this weekend, and it was fantastic to be around thousands of people calling for an end to the occupation and for a ceasefire. And I would

highly encourage you to do the same if it's happening in your own city. So Marwa, it was really fantastic to speak with you. I can only imagine how difficult, you know, this past month or so has been, but I thank you so much for the work that you do and for, you know, coming to speak to us and sharing that with us. Yeah, it was great speaking with you. Thank you again for having me. Marwa Fitafta is a Palestinian digital rights advocate and Middle East North Africa policy Thank you again for having me. critical perspectives on the tech industry, you can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening and make sure to come back next week. Thank you.