Social media giants Meta and TikTok have been warned by the European Commission to detail how they have mitigated the spread of disinformation, violent content, hate speech, and terrorist propaganda on their platforms, just a week after X was also given the same warning.

Now, the platforms have a week to explain the specific actions they have taken to dispel and remove this content amid one of the most desperate humanitarian crisis’ of the last decade.

Disinformation has flooded social media after the October 7 attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas militants which sparked even further bombings and airstrikes by the Israeli military onto civilians in Gaza, a population of around 2 million, around half of which are children. The death toll in Gaza has reached 3,000 over the weekend.

The conflict has raised global tensions and has since seen a rise in hate speech and violent content arise on social media. The EU’s Digital Services Act does not allow for hate speech, and calls on social media platforms to censor violent content so viewers can better control what they are exposed to on social sites.

The disinformation on X has been well documented as the conflict continued to escalate – the nature of the conflict and the unbalance access to media outlets, internet, and electricity between areas occupied by the Israeli government and areas allotted to Palestinians, including Gaza and the West Bank, have made violence difficult to document appropriately.

For instance, journalists are still unable to independently verify what organisation was behind the bombing of the al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza. Palestinian officials said the bombing, which resulted in the death of at least 500 civilians seeking shelter amid continuous attacks, was the result of an airstrike from the Israeli military. Israel, however, pushed back on these claims, saying it was a failed strike from Islamic Jihad, a different group operating in Gaza, which denied the the accusation.

The stakes could not be higher with regards to the danger of disinformation – a child in the United States has already been murdered in an Islamiphobic attack, with disinformation and an overall lack of understanding of the current situation in Israel-Palestine serving as a culprit to spur egregious action.

The EU is therefore calling on social media sites to combat the spread of disinformation proliferating on their platforms under the Digital Services Act, which has creates specific stipulations for tech’s biggest players.

The Digital Services Act is asking them to not just stop the spread of disinformation, but violent and hateful content as well. How this is defined, however, may come into question.

Recommended reading

• EU Investigating X Over Alleged Disinformation Amid Israel-Hamas Conflict
• Israel-Palestine Disinformation Rampant on Social Media
• Hacktivist Groups Pounce As Israel-Palestine Conflict Escalates

For instance, Instagram users are already saying that some of their content is being blocked or ‘shadow-banned’ from being’s newsfeeds. Essentially, while the content is not outright removed, it is not typically shared widely and Instagram’s algorithm will filter out certain content from people’s usual feeds.

Supporters of Palestine are saying their content is being censored – the Guardian reported several Instagram users whose accounts no longer showed up in searches, whose content no longer showed up on people’s feeds, after they posted content in support of Palestine.

Meta has previously come under fire for the same offence, and in 2021, independent analysis commissioned by the company itself found that it had violated the human rights of Palestinians in censoring content related to the attacks on Gaza by the Israeli government.

The removal of violent content is also not straightforward in times of conflict and genocide, as the public needs to and wants to stay informed. Still, the EU is asking social media sites to filter violent content and hate speech as the assault on Gaza continues.