A former Meta engineer has accused the company of bias against pro-Gaza content. In a lawsuit, he claims that Meta fired him for trying to help fix bugs that lead to the restriction of Palestinian posts on Instagram, Reuters reports.
American engineer of Palestinian descent Ferras Hamad has been working on Meta's machine learning team since 2021. Now he has filed a lawsuit in a California state court against the social media giant for discrimination, wrongful termination, and other actions in connection with his dismissal in February.
In the lawsuit, Hamad accused Meta of being biased against Palestinians, saying that the company deleted internal employee messages that mentioned the deaths of their relatives in Gaza and investigated their use of the Palestinian flag emoji.
The engineer believes that his dismissal appears to have been the result of an incident in December. It is related to a procedure known at Meta as SEV or "site event," which is designed to fix serious problems with the company's platforms.
Hamad noticed irregularities in the SEV process, which were related to restrictions on content posted by Palestinian Instagram users. These violations prevented posts from appearing in search and news feeds.
The engineer said that he received conflicting instructions regarding the status of the SEV and whether he was authorized to help resolve such issues. Later, according to the specialist, his supervisor confirmed in writing that this was part of the engineer's job description.
The following month, a Meta representative informed Ferras Hamad that he was the subject of an investigation. The employee filed an internal complaint of discrimination and was fired a few days later.
The company explained to the engineer that he was fired for violating a policy that prohibits employees from working with accounts of people they know personally. According to him, the case in question was a Palestinian photojournalist whose video was incorrectly labeled. Hamad discovered the case, but claims he does not know the person.