Israel-Gaza war: Meta sorry for ‘error’ over removal of Malaysia PM Anwar’s posts on Hamas

Earlier, both social media sites had removed pictures of Anwar with Haniyeh and other leaders from Hamas’ political wing, who the prime minister had met while on a working visit to Qatar in May.

On Tuesday they issued an apology.

“We apologise for an operational error where content from the prime minister’s Facebook and Instagram pages were removed – and the content has since been restored with the correct newsworthy label,” a Meta spokesman said in an emailed statement in response to queries from This Week in Asia.

Checks on Anwar’s Facebook and Instagram accounts showed the content had been restored.

The initial removal irked Malaysians, many of whom demanded that action be taken against Meta for allegedly filtering out anything linked to Palestine.

“I’m fine if we even impose an outright ban (on Meta). There are other social media that are more open,” read a comment on Facebook by user Mohd Helmi Aliarit.

The prime minister’s office said in a statement on Monday that Meta’s actions were discriminatory and “an insult to the legitimate rights of Palestinians to demand justice and human rights”.

“The unilateral decision to filter content without considering the context of the post raises questions on the transparency in Meta’s content policy,” the office said.

It also complained of a disruption to a Facebook live stream by national broadcaster RTM of a Palestine solidarity rally organised by the government on Sunday.

Meta said the disruption was due to a copyright complaint over music played at the rally, which was attended by Anwar and other government leaders.

“While we worked to address this IP concern as swiftly as possible, Malaysians were still able to view the live stream on many other Facebook Pages,” Meta’s spokesman