Owda’s account had 1.4 million followers, she said.

The Palestinian journalist has spent years documenting life in Gaza under Israeli occupation and, recently, amid Israel’s genocide. Her series with Al Jazeera’s AJ+ has won numerous awards, including a Peabody Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and even an Emmy. At the same time, pro-Israel voices have sought to silence Owda, including in a campaign in 2024 to pressure her Emmy nomination to be withdrawn.

In her Instagram video, Owda said that the ban was “expected” due to pressure from high-powered figures to censor Palestinian voices from TikTok.

She overlaid a video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks at the UN General Assembly in September, in which he named TikTok as a “number one” priority of Israel.

She also shared a video with the company’s U.S. CEO, Adam Presser, saying that the company made a change to designate critically labelling someone as a “Zionist” as hate speech. “Over the course of 2024, we tripled the amount of accounts that we were banning for hateful activity,” Presser bragged at a conference last year.

  • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    2 days ago

    I’m not sure what this proves as I put zero stock in the word of a Republican senator. He could be telling the truth or he could be an opportunist using the support for Israel’s genocide in Palestine to push the narrative he wants.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      I put zero stock in the word of a Republican senator

      He was the primary advocate and original co-sponsor for the bill that Joe Biden eventually signed. If you’re not taking his word at why he authored the legislation, advanced it through his own committee, and pushed it onto the President’s desk, who else are you going to listen to?

      • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        2 days ago

        Again I don’t see what this angle proves or disproves? I don’t trust his word because Republican politicians have zero credibility. I also think Joe Biden has zero credibility and them advancing this through bureaucratic procedure doesn’t make it any more or less credible. Even if the claim that they used it to push anti-Israel propaganda is false, it doesn’t mean the claim that China used it to push propaganda is false.

        Given what we know about social media and powerful governments leveraging it to their benefit, my default belief is to assume that they were using it for this purpose until proven otherwise. Nobody has yet attempted to even make an argument as to why they wouldn’t also be using it for the same purpose, especially considering they’ve been running “the great firewall” to control the flow of information to their own population for more than 20 years.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          I don’t trust his word because Republican politicians have zero credibility.

          They’re highly credible on their professed loyalty and support for Israel.

          it doesn’t mean the claim that China used it to push propaganda is false

          TikTok is not a Chinese company, it is not run by Chinese apparatchiks, and it isn’t integrated into the Chinese state media system. It is a Singapore based company invested into by a conglomeration of international investors.

          my default belief is to assume that they were using it for this purpose

          Why would you assume the Chinese government is calling the shots and not any of the governments of other TikTok investors?

          It isn’t as though TikTok lacked Israeli-favorable propaganda. The Israeli media simply didn’t trend as well as Palestinian Rights media. How does this lead you to conclude China is to blame? Wouldn’t a Palestine-symathetic state be a more likely culprit? Qatar, for instance?