On Tuesday, a former Meta (META.O) engineer accused the company of bias in handling content related to the Gaza conflict, claiming in a lawsuit that Meta terminated him for addressing bugs that suppressed Palestinian Instagram posts. Ferras Hamad, a Palestinian-American engineer who had worked on Meta’s machine learning team since 2021, filed the suit in a California state court, alleging discrimination, wrongful termination, and other misconduct following his dismissal in February.
In his complaint, Hamad alleged that Meta exhibited a pattern of bias against Palestinians, including deleting internal communications mentioning the deaths of employees’ relatives in Gaza and investigating the use of the Palestinian flag emoji by employees. The lawsuit states that no similar investigations were conducted for employees using Israeli or Ukrainian flag emojis in similar situations.
Meta did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment on Hamad’s allegations. Hamad’s claims echo long-standing criticisms from human rights groups regarding Meta’s content moderation related to Israel and the Palestinian territories, highlighted in an external investigation commissioned by the company in 2021.
The conflict in Gaza intensified after Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking over 250 hostages, according to Israeli reports. In response, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza, resulting in over 36,000 deaths and a humanitarian crisis, according to Gaza health officials. Since the war’s outbreak, Meta has faced accusations of suppressing pro-Palestinian expressions on its platforms.
Nearly 200 Meta employees expressed similar concerns in an open letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other leaders earlier this year.
