Earlier this month, “Hacksaw Ridge” actor Nathaniel Buzolic was censored by Instagram and TikTok for trying to raise awareness about the violence happening in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Concerns about “false information”
In a recent interview with Fox News, Buzolic stated that Meta deactivated his Instagram account on three different occasions after he posted content in support of Israel. When he reposted a video of a child-kidnapping that recently took place in Gaza on his TikTok, the platform accused him of sharing “false information” and removed the video from his account.
When asked for his thoughts about why Instagram and TikTok would want to remove his posts, Buzolic commented:
“I think what this really presents is a clear and coordinated effort of groups to shut down content and accounts like myself [sic] who have been exposing the atrocities of what Hamas has done… [P]eople need to understand that Hamas and pro-Palestinian propaganda is very, very good at manipulating social media. They know all the tools, all the techniques, and I think the American people need to sit back and realize that this is [sic] not grandmas in Texas who are reporting my accounts, but these are groups of people who know that the battle that’s being fought on the ground in Israel is also an information war.”
Is Meta siding with terrorism?
In response to Buzolic’s censorship, Fox asked Meta for a comment. In its response, the company did not did not even acknowledge censoring Buzolic, but simply stated:
“Our teams are working around the clock to keep our platforms safe, take action on content that violates our policies or local law, and coordinate with third-party fact-checkers in the region to limit the spread of misinformation. We’ll continue this work as this conflict unfolds.”
Buzolic then accused the social media giant of acting out of cowardice:
“This is just the classic avoiding responsibility and trying to sit in a middle seat. I would say this to every single person that’s watching – when it comes to dealing with this Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has been going on for a very long time, and a lot of people want to avoid it because of the nuances, the fact of the matter is what we saw from [recent developments] gives people no choice.
They’re either in the position where they’re going to support and allow terrorism to exist… or we’re going to stand behind this nation of people who have now faced one of their greatest threats, not only in Israel itself, but we’ve even seen that the leader of Hamas has called for people to go and slaughter Jews around the world… And I think that’s one of the greatest realities we need to understand… The true victim of this conflict has – and always will be – the Jewish people.”
Fox also reached out to TikTok for a comment regarding its treatment of Buzolic, but it failed to respond.