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Meta has apologised after Instagram inserted the word “terrorist” into some Palestinian users’ profile bios.
Some bios containing the word “Palestinian” followed by the Palestinian flag emoji and the Arabic phrase “Alhamdulillah,” which means “Praise be to God”, were being auto-translated to: “Praise be to God, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom.”
The issue was brought to attention by TikTok user ytkingkhan, who tested the phrase on his Instagram account.
He later tested it again and found it translated to: “Palestinian terrorists [Palestinian flag emoji] Praise be to Allah.”
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In a statement, Meta said: “We fixed a problem that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations in some of our products.
“We sincerely apologise that this happened.”
In a blog post on Wednesday, Meta – which owns Facebook and Instagram – said it had introduced several measures since the Israel-Hamas war began “to address the spike in harmful and potentially harmful content spreading on our platforms”.
It said there was “no truth to the suggestion that we are deliberately suppressing [anyone’s] voice”.
The company said content containing praise for Hamas, which it designates a “dangerous organisation”, or violent and graphic content is not allowed on its platforms – but conceded it “can make errors” and urged anyone who thought it had made a wrong decision to use its appeals process.
It also said it had fixed a bug which prevented re-shared reels and feed posts from showing up properly in people’s Instagram stories, “leading to…
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