Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to touch on what we are hearing about censorship and the disproportionate censorship of Palestinian voices. I have seen stories about hiding hashtags and content takedowns. We often see people using workarounds to try to trick the algorithm, such as by using an "@" sign in the word "Gaza". Does that work? Mr. Ó Broin said that complaints of this nature are coming from both sides, but it has been suggested it is more intense on Palestinian voices, given many Israeli accounts might be official entities.

In 2022, following the 2021 Palestine-Israel conflict, a Facebook-commissioned Business for Social Responsibility, BSR, report concluded that based on the data reviewed, Meta's actions in 2021 appeared to have had an adverse human rights impact on the rights of Palestinian users to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, political participation and non-discrimination and, therefore, on the ability of Palestinians to share information and insights about their experiences as they occurred. Our concern is that there is a huge threat to the flow of information, credible journalism, civil society voices and human rights defenders. I am also conscious that under the DSA, there is a need for transparency and shadow banning is covered. I would welcome a comment from all the companies, given they have all been accused of significant and disproportionate censorship of Palestinian voices. I am not just talking about Meta.