r/JewsOfConscience • u/MondoweissOfficial • Sep 12 '22

AMA I produce the Mondoweiss Podcast – AMA!

Hi r/JewsOfConscience, I'm Dave and I am the product manager at Mondoweiss. I produce the Mondoweiss Podcast, assist with video production, and various other work related to running an independent, non-profit news and opinion publication.

https://mondoweiss.net

https://mondoweiss.net/podcast/

Ask me anything!

https://imgur.com/a/aIPAeFI

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u/[deleted] Sep 12 '22

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A big topic now within Palestine solidarity activism, and even just simply existing as either Palestinian or an ally, is censorship.

There have been many reports of users' content being inexplicably removed. The Intercept recently reported on the double-standard when it comes to violent (and even non-violent) content originating in I/P.

Mohammed el-Kurd has been the subject of articles about Facebook's censorship practices, with Facebook moderators reportedly questioning why el-Kurd was being singled out for reviews/removals/etc.

All of this seems to be getting coverage in mainstream outlets, but the problem still persists.

Has Mondoweiss faced any censorship on Twitter or Facebook - and if so, what kinds of explanations (if any) were you given by the administrators/headquarters?

I do recall the MW documentary on apartheid being removed for awhile, and then put back up.

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u/MondoweissOfficial Sep 12 '22

So, actually, in the past 3 years or so I have to say that we have not been subjected to any real censoring on these social platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube – the big 4). We have had a few occasional notices that someone in Germany reported our tweets, but they haven't done anything to them. There is one time going back maybe 4 years that I recall they told us to take a tweet down, but we appealed it, and they relented.

Here's the short version of the story regarding the video on Twitter. As you all may know, Yumna produced a long video, about 22 minutes, going in-depth explaining the way the apartheid regime works in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. You can watch it here, it's fantastic.

We edited a trailer for the video to promote it and posted that on Twitter. That tweet got a LOT of attention. Then, suddenly, it was just kind of gone. Not entirely gone, but it would only show up in certain places. We asked Twitter for help, and got no reply. So we publicized the problem. And that also got shared a lot. For us, it was sort of a viral moment. Twitter never replied to us or contacted us in any way.

Ultimately, a source inside Twitter took it upon herself to fix the situation. We then learned from this source that there wasn't any intentional act inside Twitter to suppress the video. It had all happened automatically through their internal monitoring tools. Once a human looked at it, they fixed it and the tweet and video were displayed correctly. Obviously, this is another example of the massive problems we face trying to corral public expression on corporate-owned platforms like these social media platforms.

Having said that, Twitter has rejected us at least three times for "verification." Instagram rejected us twice for their version of "verification." We are "verified" on Facebook, but that dates back to a time when a group of independent news groups approached Facebook together to get verified. I doubt they would do it again today if we had to ask for it alone.