A former Meta engineer filed a lawsuit on Tuesday accusing the company of discriminatory practices in handling content related to the Gaza war. He claimed that he was fired by Meta for trying to fix a bug that was throttling Palestinian Instagram posts.
Feras Hamad, a Palestinian-American engineer on Meta’s machine learning team since 2021, sued the social media giant in California, alleging discrimination and wrongful termination over his firing in February.
Hamad accused Meta of bias against Palestinians, citing the removal of internal communications mentioning deaths of Gaza Strip relatives and investigations into the use of a Palestinian flag emoji.
The lawsuit alleged the company did not investigate employees posting Israeli or Ukrainian flag emojis in similar situations. Meta did not immediately respond to the allegations.
These allegations align with ongoing criticism from human rights groups about Meta’s moderation of Israel-Palestine content on its platform, including an external review in 2021.
Since last year’s conflict outbreak, Meta has faced accusations of suppressing support for Palestinians. The conflict erupted in Gaza in October after Hamas attacks, resulting in casualties and a humanitarian crisis.
Earlier this year, about 200 Meta employees raised similar concerns in a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other leaders.
Hamad’s firing seems linked to a December incident involving a troubleshooting procedure at Meta. He raised concerns about restrictions affecting Palestinian content on Instagram.
The lawsuit mentioned a case where a video by a Palestinian photojournalist was wrongly classified as explicit, sparking further issues.
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Hamad faced conflicting instructions on resolving the SEV issues, leading to his investigation and subsequent termination by Meta.
He claimed Meta cited a rule violation related to a photojournalist, but he denied any personal connection to the individual.
Source: www.theguardian.com
