7or is an open-source online platform to document and address digital rights violations of Palestinians. The platform allows Palestinians to report violations such as account suspension or content take down, enabling the 7amleh (The Arab Center for Social Media Advancement) team to follow up with the violations reported by Palestinians. These reports form an organised online database of violations accessible to human rights organisations.

7or stands against the censorship that Palestinians have faced over the years, with much Palestinian content deleted on Israeli requests. In 2016, Israel’s Justice Minister stated that Facebook, YouTube, and Google had been complying with 95 percent of requests to remove Palestinian content, whilst in 2020, 7amleh found that Facebook had  taken down Palestinian content on Israel’s requests.

Israel’s policing of Palestinian content reached a peak in May 2021 when Palestinians began an online social media movement to advocate for their rights. The efforts of Palestinians, led by two twins, Muna and Mohamed El Kurd, garnered national and international attention. Their efforts were met with a staunch digital crackdown. Palestinians who were sharing realities of violence on the ground reported that their accounts had been censored, limited, or removed, whilst Palestinian content was also censored or removed. As an example, Mohamed El Kurd received a warning that his account may be removed for breaching community guidelines, and Muna El Kurd’s account was temporarily suspended on May 5. Between 6 and 19 May, nearly 500 removals were documented.

7or is the latest effort that advocates for Palestinian digital rights. Previously, US congresswoman Rashida Talib required to know why certain Palestinian content was removed or censored in a letter she addressed to social media companies. Further, organisations including Fight for the Future, the National Lawyers Guild, and Jewish Voice for Peace wrote a letter to Facebook’s chief operating officer asking to stop the censoring of Palestinians and provide more transparency on the website’s content moderation.

Pro-Palestinian activists ran a campaign in protest of Facebook’s censorship aiming to downgrade Facebook’s rating on Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. The campaign called for people to give Facebook a one-star review and led the app’s ratings to fall to 2.3 out 5 on App Store and to 2.4 out of 5 on Play Store. Most of the reviews included comments with the hashtags #FreePalestine and #Gazaunderattack. Facebook labelled the situation as an issue of the highest priority.

Palestinians’ digital rights violations have been occurring for several years now. 7or helps Palestinians get justice by following up on reports of violations. The platform also helps bridge the gap between human rights organisations and digital rights groups by providing an online database of reports.

Sarah is a recent graduate from University of Toronto. She specialized in Digital Enterprise Management and majored in Political Science. She is currently working as a Compliance Analyst for the G7 and the BRICS Research Groups. Her research interests are digital rights, political violence and internet regulation.

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