X, formerly Twitter, suspends hundreds of Palestinian accounts amid Israel-Gaza war
Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, has removedÌý"hundreds" of accounts it deemed to be "affiliated with Hamas" in an attempt to curb the spread of what it said was "violent and hateful" content online.
The company's CEO Linda YaccarinoÌýÌýthe platform had taken down accounts which had violated policiesÌýaimed at stopping the spread of "violent and hateful content" on X. The platform also removed posts that included graphic content, it said.
XÌýÌýon Monday that posts from daily active users in Israel drastically increased after Hamas launched a surprise attack on Saturday.
Israel has relentlessly bombed the besieged Gaza Strip since then, killing 1,799 Palestinians, including over 500 children, and wounding over 6,000.
Meta, which runs Facebook, said it removed or marked as "disturbing" more than 795,000 pieces of content in Hebrew and Arabic.
The Arab Centre for Advancement of Social Media () said it documented more than 19,000 cases of hate speech and inciting content in the Hebrew language.
"The Israeli government is taking advantage of the current international sentiment to continue exerting pressure on social media companies to censor the Palestinian narrative and silence voices critical of Israeli policies," 7amleh said in a statement.
The move by X to target accounts reporting on Palestine comes as information from people in Gaza gets more difficult to obtain amid Israel's total siege on its two million residents, which has cut off electricity and fuel, and as Israel Ìýof the besieged enclave.
On Tuesday, Instagram the account of the PalestinianÌýcorrespondent ofÌýMondoweiss, while the news site's TikTok account was temporarily taken down a day earlier.
A spokesperson for X did not immediately respond to °®Âþµº's request for comment.Ìý