Facebook briefly closes Palestinian journalists’ pages, apologizes

Facebook apologizes after temporarily disabling accounts linked to two Palestinian news sites critical of Israel, a move that drew concern over potential online censorship.

Facebook pages of a number of editors of Quds News Network were suspended for several hours last Friday, a campaigner said, in what the social media giant now calls a “mistake.”

Pages linked to the Shehab News Agency were also disabled, an editor there said.

Quds has 5.2 million likes on Facebook, while Shehab has 6.35 million.

“The pages were removed in error and restored as soon as we were able to investigate,” Facebook says in a statement.

“Our team processes millions of reports each week, and we sometimes get things wrong. We’re very sorry about this mistake.”

The US-based company does not respond to a request for more details on what prompted the closures.

— AFP