NBC reported that there is a massive 1 star review campaign against the world’s largest social media platform, Facebook app among pro-Palestinian forces and activists opposed to Israel.
NBC stated that campaign is taking place on various social medias to urge Facebook to give only one star in the evaluation of app stores used in smartphones. The pro-Palestinians claim that Facebook has tightened censorship of Palestinian-related accounts or posts since the Israeli-Palestinian armed conflict began on the 10th.
Play Store and App Store allow users to evaluate individual apps with five stars. Thus Facebook is being pressured by given only one star rating.
As thousands of people continued to evaluate Facebook apps last week, the average score of Apple’s App Store, which originally exceeded four points, dropped to 2.3 points and dropped to 2.4 points in Google Play Store
Comments on the evaluation include claims such as “Facebook is silencing Palestinian voices” and hashtags such as “#FreePalestine” and “#GazaUnderAttack”. Facebook and Twitter have been suspected of restricting and deleting Palestinian posts and accounts from time to time. The clash, which killed about 250 people in Palestine, prompted a full-fledged anti-Facebook campaign.
Criticism is spreading not only to Facebook but also to other social networking sites. AccessNow, a non-profit organization advocating digital rights, criticized Instagram for restricting hashtags referring to the Al-Aqsa Temple in East Jerusalem, which was the epicenter of the crash, and Twitter limited the writings of Palestinian-American author Mariam Varguti.
Facebook defines the situation as ‘SEV1’ and takes it very seriously, NBC said. SEV1 is the second highest crisis rating after SEV0, which is issued when Facebook’s homepage is down.
Facebook engineer’s stated as quoted in the article that in the wake of the Israeli-Palestinian armed conflict, the credibility of users is significantly decreasing. Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement, “Our policy is to ensure that everyone has a safe voice on our app, and this applies equally regardless of who the publisher is and what his beliefs are.”
Google and Apple have not made a separate announcement about the star attack on Facebook apps.