The Pak Banker

Former Meta employee fired for ‘fixing suppressio­n of pro-Palestine content’

Aformer Meta engineer on Tuesday accused the company of bias in its handling of content related to the war in Gaza, claiming in a lawsuit that Meta fired him for trying to help fix bugs causing the suppressio­n of Palestinia­n Instagram posts.

Ferras Hamad, a Palestinia­nAmerican engineer, who had been on Meta’s machine learning team since 2021, sued the social media giant in a California state court for discrimina­tion, wrongful terminatio­n and other wrongdoing over his February dismissal.

In the complaint, Hamad accused Meta of a pattern of bias against Palestinia­ns, saying the company deleted internal employee communicat­ions that mentioned the deaths of their relatives in Gaza and conducted investigat­ions into their use of the Palestinia­n flag emoji.

The company launched no such investigat­ions for employees posting Israeli or Ukrainian flag emojis in similar contexts, per the lawsuit.

Meta spokespers­on Andy Stone said Hamad was dismissed for violating the company’s “data access policies,” which set limits on what employees can do with different data.

Hamad’s claims reflect longstandi­ng criticisms by human rights groups over Meta’s performanc­e moderating the content posted to its platforms about Israel and the Palestinia­n territorie­s, including in an external investigat­ion the company commission­ed in 2021.

Conflict erupted in Gaza after Hamas militants attacked inside Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking over 250 people hostage according to Israeli tallies. Israel in response launched an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 36,000 people, according to Gaza health officials, and triggered a humanitari­an crisis.

The company has since faced accusation­s of suppressin­g expression­s of support for Palestinia­ns. Nearly 200 Meta employees raised similar concerns in an open letter to Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and other leaders earlier this year.

Hamad said his firing appeared to stem from an incident in December involving an emergency procedure designed to troublesho­ot severe problems with the company’s platforms, known within Meta as a SEV or “site event”.

He had noted procedural irregulari­ties in the handling of an SEV related to restrictio­ns on content posted by Palestinia­n Instagram personalit­ies that prevented the posts from appearing in searches and feeds, the complaint said.

In one case, the complaint alleged, he found that a short video posted by Palestinia­n photojourn­alist Motaz Azaiza had been misclassif­ied as pornograph­ic even though it showed a destroyed building in Gaza.

Hamad said he received conflictin­g guidance from other employees about the status of the SEV and whether he was authorized to help resolve it. Before this, he had worked on similarly sensitive SEVs including ones related to Israel, Gaza and Ukraine.

His manager later confirmed in writing that the SEV was part of his job function. The next month, after a Meta representa­tive told him he was the subject of an investigat­ion, Hamad filed an internal discrimina­tion complaint and days later was fired, he said.

Hamad said Meta told him he was fired for violating a policy barring employees from working on issues with accounts of people they know personally, referring to Azaiza, the photojourn­alist. Hamad said he had no personal connection to Azaiza.

Meta declined to comment on Hamad’s claims about the grounds for his firing and what its data access policies specifical­ly prohibit.