Syed Imran Haider 
A Palestinian American engineer, Ferras Hamad has filed a lawsuit against Meta for wrongful termination and discrimination.
Hamad had been part of the social media giant’s machine learning team since 2021 and filed the lawsuit in a Californian state court.
He claimed that he had been dismissed in February for trying to fix bugs that were suppressing Palestinian content on Instagram related to the war in Gaza.
The lawsuit
The ex-Meta employee said in his complaint that he had detected a pattern of bias against Palestinians while working at the company.
He said that Meta had investigated its employees over their use of the Palestinian flag emoji.
Hamad further accused the firm of deleting internal employee communications in which they discussed the death of their relatives in Gaza.
The lawsuit further alleged that no such actions had been undertaken against employees who posted flags of Ukraine or Israel in similar contexts. The claims from Hamad do not come as a surprise.
Various human rights groups have already criticized Meta over how it moderates the content posted on its platforms related to Palestinian and Israel territories.
As a matter of fact, there had also been an external investigation into the matter back in 2021.
The current situation
On October 7th, Hamas militants entered Israel and took 250 people hostage, while killing 1,200 people. In response, Israel launched an offensive that has resulted in the death of over 36,000 people.
Since the war broke out last year, there have been accusations against Meta that it was not allowing people to use its platforms to express their support for Palestinians.
Earlier this year, an open letter had also been penned to CEO Mark Zuckerberg in which almost 200 Meta employees and other leaders had expressed similar concerns.
Hamad highlighted an incident that had occurred in December that likely resulted to his firing. He said that it involved an emergency procedure called SEV or ‘site event’ within the company.
The said procedure is aimed at troubleshooting difficult issues with the social media platforms of the firm.
The complaint
Hamad asserted in the complaint that he had come across procedural irregularities related to the restrictions on content that Palestinian personalities were posting on Instagram.
Therefore, their posts could not be seen on feeds and in searches. The complaint also highlighted a video posted by Motaz Azaiza.
The Palestinian photojournalist had posted a short video of a building destroyed in Gaza, but it had been classified as pornographic.
As per Hamad, he had received conflicting guidance from other employees regarding the SEV. Likewise, his authorization for helping resolve the SEV was also unclarified.
This was despite the fact that he had worked on other similar SEVs before, which had been related to Ukraine, Gaza and Israel.
Later, his manager had also confirmed that the SEV had been part of his job. The next month, he had been informed that he was being investigated.
This prompted Hamad to file a complaint for internal discrimination, after which he was dismissed. Meta said that he had violated their policy of working on accounts of people they know.
Meta was referring to Azaiza, but Hamad has stated that he is not connected to the photojournalist in any way.
