Meta Employee Sues, Alleging Censorship of Pro-Palestine Content and ‘Pattern of Bias’ at Company

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Ferras Hamad, a Palestinian-American engineer, is suing Meta, claiming the company discriminated against him and others with pro-Palestinian views amid the Israel-Hamas war.

Reuters was first to report on Wednesday about Hamad’s lawsuit being filed in California. The former Meta engineer said he was fired in February after trying to “fix bugs causing the suppression of Palestinian Instagram posts.” He also claimed a “pattern of bias” within the company.

According to Hamad’s suit, Meta deleted internal communications by employees in which they discussed losing family and friends in Gaza, where thousands of civilians have been killed by Israel’s strikes. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the assault will not end until Hamas is eliminated. The terror group attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,000 and kidnapping hundreds.

Hamad also claimed Meta investigated the use of a Palestinian flag emoji being used by employees despite not investigating other flag emojis being used to raise support, like the Ukrainian flag.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was previously accused of internal censorship by a group of employees who signed their names to a protest letter earlier this month. The employees accused the social media platform of deleting pro-Palestinian messages by employees.

“While we loudly display ‘Your voice is valued,’ CEE is used as a guise to delete dissenting opinions and silence employees that may simply be seeking solace from their coworkers or raising awareness about building safer products,” the open letter to Zuckerberg and “leadership” read.