No one who keeps up with things should be surprised by any censorship that occurs anywhere in the world, and certainly not by censorship done at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party by a CCP-controlled company like ByteDance, parent company of TikTok.
But maybe it’s harder to avoid feeling flabbergasted when you’re the one whose words are being suppressed (“ ‘Shocked’: TV Host Blasts TikTok, Instagram for Blocking Pro-Israel Content,” NewsBusters, May 14, 2024).
Dan Abrams discussed the censorship of his content with his father Floyd Abrams during the Dan Abrams Live show. The NewsNation host played a clip of him challenging a pro-Palestinian professor on why anti-Israel protesters [don’t] call for a Hamas ceasefire proposal, if ceasefire was their true goal.” According to the host, this content was censored on Instagram for allegedly promoting a dangerous organization.
Dan Abrams also touched on TikTok’s ties to the communist Chinese government and compared the differing standards he said the app used in censoring content challenging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu versus the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
“I mean, look, on TikTok, I guess I wasn’t as surprised, that they are, it’s owned by China, right?… The content that they censored from me was when I was questioning the numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry, and I had an expert on who was saying that the numbers can’t make sense,” the NewsNation host said. “They wouldn’t let me share that. But then, when I asked tough questions of Netanyahu’s spokesperson, oh, that was fine to distribute.”
Was it Hamas or Israel that the Instagram algorithm regarded as the “dangerous organization” Dan Abrams was “promoting” by asking critical questions about Hamas and pro-Hamas protesters?
If cornered, maybe Meta, owner of Instagram and Facebook, would say that the damming of Dan’s words was all a terrible mistake, that Meta didn’t mean to do that. But if that’s the case, why are algorithms being allowed to function as judge, jury, and executioner?
