Former Meta engineer sues company for alleged bias against Palestinian publications

A former Meta engineer, Ferras Hamad, filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing it of bias in its handling of content related to the Gaza conflict. According to a Reuters report, Hamad claims he was fired for fixing bugs that removed Palestinian posts on Instagram.

It alleges that Meta engaged in discrimination, wrongful termination and other misconduct leading to his termination in February. Hamad, a Palestinian-American who has worked on Meta's machine learning team since 2021, claims the company has been biased against Palestinians.

The lawsuit claims that Meta deleted internal communications mentioning the deaths of employees' relatives in Gaza and investigated the use of the Palestinian flag emoji, without conducting similar investigations for Israeli or Ukrainian flag emojis.

Hamad's trial highlights ongoing criticism from human rights groups over Meta's moderation of content related to Israel and the Palestinian territories. These criticisms include the findings of an external investigation commissioned by Meta in 2021. The lawsuit also references an open letter from nearly 200 Meta employees raising similar concerns to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives.

The lawsuit details an incident in December involving an emergency procedure, known as a SEV or “site event,” related to restrictions on content posted by Palestinian Instagram personalities. Hamad identified procedural irregularities and found a video by Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, wrongly classified as pornographic.

Despite receiving conflicting advice and his manager confirming that SEV was part of his job, Hamad was later fired after filing an internal discrimination complaint.