Meta's Challenge with Olives and Watermelon: The Case of Blocking Posts About Gaza

Digitalization stands out as an important factor transforming social structures and forms of communication in today's society. Social media offers a socio-political ground for participatory democracy and an alternative to traditional media in a globalizing world. Recently, Israel's attack on Gaza and the massive genocide in the region have caused a great resonance on the internet and social media. The aim of this study is to examine the censorship mechanisms applied by social media platforms during Israel's attacks on Gaza. The main question of the research is how social media censorship mechanisms affect freedom of expression and digital activism. As a result of the research, it has been observed that since the first days of the war, especially on Facebook and Instagram, posts were removed biasedly, and the accounts of people who frequently posted such posts were slowed down, and their posts were algorithmically blocked from being seen. As a result of this process, users have tried to overcome this situation with visuals such as watermelons and olives, symbols associated with Gaza. Contradicting the idea that alternative new media creates a libertarian space, it created great disappointment and damaged the trust of users. The importance of the research lies in its demonstration of the effects of censorship on freedom of expression and digital activism in social media. The study will examine social media censorship in Gaza in detail through using a literature review methodology and discussing relevant figures. As a result, we will present examples of the efforts of social media users who are algorithmically censored, which we call symbolic subversion, to overcome this situation with symbols.