The boycott campaign against Facebook on Sunday received a widespread response from social media users in parallel with active participation on the Twitter hashtag page #fbcensorspalestine, according to the Palestinian media.
Although the campaign was intended to last for two hours, scores of Facebook users have stopped to use their pages for a long time and contributed to making the hashtag #fbcensorspalestine a trending topic on Twitter.
The campaign was launched after Facebook deleted the accounts of several Palestinian journalists, activists, and media centers in compliance with a previous deal with the Israeli government to rein in content advocating resistance activities.
The campaign seems to have paid off after Facebook apologized yesterday for disabling Palestinian accounts. In a related context, the Israeli occupation authority has announced it will hold trials against 145 Palestinian social media activists for their Facebook postings.
On the other hand, The Israeli Authorities prevented Palestinian online activists, who were earlier arrested for Facebook posts, from further using social media networks for different periods of time.
Palestine Center for Prisoners Studies said that Israeli authorities recently released a group of detained online activists on condition of not using social media for a limited period, in addition to imposing different fines and placing them under house arrest.
Since the beginning of 2015, 185 Palestinian activists including 30 women were detained for incitement to violence on social media. Last year, 120 activists were arrested under the same charge.
Over the past few days, two Israeli government ministers met top Facebook officials to discuss ways of collaboration between the two parties.
The Israeli ministers and Facebook officials have agreed to work together to determine “how to tackle incitement on the social media network,” according to the Israeli press.
