The Palestinian Information Center’s Facebook page was deleted on Wednesday in a move that is being called part of a war on Palestinian content on social media networks.
No prior warning was provided by Facebook prior to the deletion, the site’s management team said. The page, which had nearly five million followers, was deleted without justification according to a report from the Middle East Monitor.
The site’s management called on Facebook to reinstate its page and stop its battle against Palestinian content, saying they have contested the ban.
Previously, the page had been forced to stop posting on Facebook after the accounts of some of its directors were also banned.
Members of management have also seen their accounts deleted and removed.
The blocking came as part of an extensive campaign in recent weeks that included many Palestinian social media platforms, the report said.
The Palestinian Information Center was founded in December 1997 in Arabic as the first Palestinian news site, dedicated to advocating the Palestinian cause and the Arab conflict.
Its biased in favor of the the rights of occupied Palestinian residents and the only Palestinian site that broadcasts its material in eight languages.
Earlier this week, journalists and activists in Palestine launched a social media campaign against Facebook’s censorship of Palestinian content, creating the page FBBlocksPalestine and using the phrase as a hashtag as well.
The drive hopes to bring to light “the threat posed by Facebook against Palestinian content, and to make it public, as well as reveal the double-standard policy of Facebook management in dealing with Israeli and Palestinian incitement on its site,” said Eyad Rifai, head of Sada Social Center, which is running the drive.
It had nearly 1,000 fans and more than 1,000 followers as of Thursday, a far cry from the millions of followers who have been blocked.
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