The Prase We All See but Rarely Understand: Shadow banning. You’ve probably read this phrase on Instagram or Twitter, usually on the accounts of activists who speak about injustice. Especially Palestine. Posts vanish, reach drops, hashtags suddenly stop working. Voices are muffled not with guns, but with code. So what exactly is shadow banning?
It is the silent censorship of content without notifying the user. You still post, you still speak, but your voice is buried under invisible weight. Algorithms deliberately reduce visibility, making your words invisible to others. And nowhere has this tactic been more systematically used than against Palestinian content.
If control of territory once defined geopolitics, today control of narratives does. And as long as corporations like Meta serve as invisible editors of truth, wars will not only be fought on the ground but also on our feeds. The first casualty, as always, is the truth. But in this case, truth is buried not by bullets, but by silence
How Shadow Banning Works: Platforms like Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) argue that shadow banning is just “content moderation.” In reality, it is censorship outsourced to algorithms. This silence is not accidental. According to a report by BBC, Facebook has greatly restricted the news from Palestinian news outlets to reach the outside world during the genocidal operations by Israel. Certain hashtags are flagged, posts are quietly removed from feeds, and accounts are restricted from trending. What’s surprising is that the user is never warned about this.
Access Now and Human Rights Watch both documented patterns of disproportionate censorship targeting Palestinian content, while pro-Israeli narratives remained untouched. According to HRW, it reviewed 1050 cases of content removal related to Israel and Palestine. 1049 suppressed content was in peaceful support of Palestine, while only one case involved removal of content in support of Palestine.
Systematic Censorship of Palestine: The evidence is overwhelming. A 2021 Human Rights Watch report concluded that Meta had “systematically suppressed” pro-Palestinian content, including peaceful speech and documentation of human rights abuses. Similarly, 7amleh, the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, recorded more than 20 documented testimonies of Palestinian content suppression. Hashtags like #GazaUnderAttack or #FreePalestine were blocked or limited. More importantly, according to the report, around 15 million inciting posts in Hebrew against Palestinian were also documented across multiple social media platforms since October 2023.
These weren’t isolated glitches. It is a pattern of silencing one struggle while amplifying another. In practice, the same platforms that claim to connect the world are deciding which lives deserve visibility.
The Double Standards: Ukraine vs Palestine: After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, this hypocrisy became clear. Meta openly adjusted its policies to allow violent speech against Russian soldiers and pro-Ukrainian war content. This is something it had never done for Palestinians. Ukrainian flags flooded feeds, solidarity campaigns trended globally, and fundraisers spread unhindered.
Meanwhile, Palestinian accounts continued to be shadow-banned for posting images of bombed homes or mourning children. It is a “two-tier system of free speech,” where Western struggles receive amplification and struggles in the Global South are muted. This hypocrisy is undeniable where people in power weaponized algorithms not to uphold neutrality, but to align with Western geopolitical interests.
The Psychological Impact of Digital Erasure: Shadow banning is not just technical censorship. It is more of a psychological warfare for people raising awareness. Just imagine you are in a warzone where you are documenting the bombing of your neighbourhood, only for you to realize your posts are invisible to the world. The silence creates despair and exhaustion, convincing many that are oppressed that speaking out is pointless.
People scrolling their social media feeds subconsciously absorb the message that if a war is not trending, perhaps it is not important, and perhaps that there’s not much going over there. Over time, this causes normalization of violence and creates apathy among people. Digital censorship doesn’t just hide suffering; it reshapes how the world feels about suffering. It convinces millions that some lives are not worth mourning.
The Geopolitics of Algorithms: If you think these biases are accidental, you are unwise. They are geopolitical. Very often tech companies have close relationships with Western governments, lobbying in Washington and Brussels. Consequently, they end up shaping policies that align with Western strategic interests. Meta and Google executives meet regularly with policymakers, and their moderation policies often mirror foreign policy priorities. This has been reported in a paper by Johns Hopkins SAIS Kissinger Center, titled “How Private Tech Companies Are Reshaping Great Power Competition”.
Cases in which Gaza content is flagged but Ukraine content is promoted reflects more than algorithmic quirk. It reflects power. Silicon Valley is not a neutral space, but an extension of Western hegemony, where the values of capital and politics dictate which narratives dominate. In this sense, algorithms have become tools of empire, erasing inconvenient struggles while amplifying preferred ones.
Why Silence Is Political: Silence is not absence, it is strategic. Tech giants actively shape global opinion by suppression of Palestinian narratives. The whole world sees Ukraine as a story of courage and a nation resisting occupation, but Gaza as a story too inconvenient to tell. This silence justifies state violence by erasing its victims from public consciousness. It transforms suffering into invisibility, and invisibility into indifference.
This is not just about social media quirks; it is geopolitics coded into algorithms. It is the digital continuation of an old hierarchy, where some lives are broadcast and others buried.
Conclusion: Who Controls the Feed, Controls the Story: Shadow banning may seem like a technical glitch, but in fact, it is a weapon of narrative warfare. By amplifying some voices and muting others, algorithms create a global hierarchy of empathy. Ukraine’s war is made hyper-visible, Gaza’s is shadowed into silence.
If control of territory once defined geopolitics, today control of narratives does. And as long as corporations like Meta serve as invisible editors of truth, wars will not only be fought on the ground but also on our feeds. The first casualty, as always, is the truth. But in this case, truth is buried not by bullets, but by silence.
