All about Digital Rights with Mona Shtaya

Mona Shtaya is a pioneering digital rights defender with more than a decade of experience. Her advocacy and campaigning has resulted in exposing digital discrimination against oppressed people, building coalitions, and mobilising groups to hold governments and tech giants accountable.

In this episode she talks about:

- What it means to be a digital rights defender (1:00 +)
- Challenges in the digital space in the MENA region (4:00 +)
- The (mis)use of laws to criminalise HRDs online (8:00)
-  Digitial rights aspects of Israel/Palestine and the most recent Gaza genocide: (11:00 +, 46:00 +)
- Shadow banning (20:20 +; 29:00 +)
- How social media companies have responded to the violation of rights online (22:00 +)
- Personal challenges she has faced online as a woman human rights defender (25:00 +)
- Technology facilitated gender based violence (27:00+)
- How algorithms and other technical aspects of censorship works (35:00 +) 
- How to beat the algorithm (41:00+)

*Note: This was recorded in October 2024, prior to the ceasefire of the Gaza genocide.

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Transcript

1:04

Thank you so much for joining us today. Welcome to the Rights on the line podcast. We're very pleased to have you with us. Please tell our listeners a bit more about yourself and the work that you do and where you're from. Thank you for having me today. My name is Mona Shtaya and I am a digital rights defender working in the Mena region. I am Palestinian, and, I focus a lot on, censorship, online censorship and surveillance in Palestine. Okay. And what would you say does it mean? what does it mean to be a digital rights defender when. It's it's an extra layer of having more challenges. Extra layer of challenges because a human rights defender usually think about the, offline or, yeah, the offline challenges that could face any human rights defender. And then I am a woman and the digital rights defenders. I have to deal with everything that is happening online, but also its extension and the offline spaces, because you can never separate the online and offline. They are like extension to each other. And this is how even the UN, define digital rights. It's the extension of human rights in the online spaces. So we are basically speaking about, all the challenges, all the violations that people are facing in the offline spaces and its reflections in the online spaces, and vice versa. And I can give a simple example on that. At any time, whenever there is an escalation on the ground, not only in Palestine, in any place around the world, wherever there is a crack down attack or anything, there is, an extension for that where people are trying either to document that and put it online, or there could be also incitement and violent speech against those communities that has been spread online. And, as a result of that, the, there is like a real world harm that is extending from the online spaces to offline, where people might be attacked based on their identity, race, gender or whatever. So this is basically how the online and offline are intersecting or a act like an extension to each other. Yeah. And I mean, we've seen just from our work at frontline, you know, one of the examples of the information against women and men like defenders in the and but from your expertise and your experience working on the Mena region, what would you say are the main challenges in the digital space? Yeah. In the region. Well, there are too many challenges when it comes to the mean region. Because we're speaking about a region that has a law that, first of all, our legislations are lagging behind technology and the evolving, the emerging technology. We don't have, suitable regulation that, that is helping us to, to shape our digital spaces. And whenever our, governments in the Mena region are legislating in new laws or, legislations, those legislations are mostly weaponized against us to silence, political opponent, human rights defenders and journalists voices. And instead of protecting people and giving them the space to express their opinions, that's one major challenge that we face in the Mena region. The other thing that we're facing is the lack of of transparency, on the relationship between our governments and regimes and the tech platforms cause there is there is this vague relationship where we don't understand what kind of information shared, what requests are made from the government to the social media platforms to take down certain content. And this could take me to the third challenge that we usually face is the online censorship that people are facing whenever they are sharing things on social media platforms, because social media platforms are at some times this proportionately censoring certain voices. We like now with everything going on the ground in Palestine, we are witnessing, a huge censorship on the Palestine related content, where the Palestine, the Palestinian documentation of human rights violations for everything going on in Gaza Strip but also in the West Bank is censored and sometimes it's taken down, which basically means the document of war crimes is taken down. That's the other thing. And the third thing is, or the fourth, challenge is the ICT harms in general that we are facing online. And this could include that information disorder, technology facilitated gender based violence, hate speech, violent speech. And among other things, that usually are, taking people to more extremism, polarization and sometimes are, causing great word harm, especially whenever there is hostile speech or violent speech against people. And in the ongoing, and the ongoing escalations in Palestine, for example, and, and Lebanon and Lebanon, we are witnessing, such violent speech coming from the Israeli, extremist groups and Israeli, ministers sometimes, who are, basically calling to wipe out Gaza or to make Lebanon as a new Gaza, which basically means like committing a genocide in Lebanon. And those, those posts are usually, stayed online, like, stay online. And as a result of that, we are facing attacks, we're facing increased violence against Palestinians and now against Lebanese people and the West Bank. We are facing increased attack from, the Israeli illegal settlers in the West Bank as a result of this, hostile speech online that social media platforms do not look into and do not invest them, proper investments to protect people from tech harms. Okay. So I want to I want to come back to to censorship on Palestine. But before we get there, you know, your first point, you you spoke about how, countries in the region are using laws to criminalize, people based on what they are saying online. Have you seen this increasing steadily, you know, in the last few years? And are there any, you know, emblematic cases that you can share with us as an example, of people being criminalized because of what they say online? Yes, of course. In the past a few years, we've seen different legislations that are, weaponized in the Mena region and, in different countries. And we've seen also how, those regimes are arresting people. The very recent one is what's happening in Tunis, where people are arrested, and civil society, spaces are shrinking, during like those at least like, like in the past a few years. But it was intensified since the beginning of this year. And, we have seen a lot of arrests, based on a decree 54 in Tunis, which has been, weaponized against activists and civil society, workers. Tunis is not the only, case, but it's very strong case because Tunis was the only democracy, in our region. And now, unfortunately, we're seeing, how is that changing? But also in the other countries, there are many documented cases about people who have been arrested or, interrogated because of the different cybercrime laws, that like the that governments are usually weaponizing and in many cases those governments are weaponizing certain accusations, such as accusing people of spreading disinformation, which basically this means because of their vague terms, this could mean that spreading normal news that is criticizing government or do not align with the government's agenda. So we have seen many of those cases in the Mena region. And and unfortunately with because it's not only about like 1 or 2 countries where seeing trends in the region, and those usually those regions and governments are exchanging and benefiting from each other experience and designing those laws and how they are using that to suppress other people's voices. So we have seen a lot of cases where, people, where were arrested based on those accusations. And as they've been examples of this in Palestine, I mean, I remember seeing videos potentially earlier this year, we, Palestinians were being arrested by Israeli authorities because of because of things that they've said online. This is something that's still happening. Yes. Of course. Again, we go back to the vague terms that usually governments and regimes are used to, arrest people, that Israeli government was, arresting people. They were basically targeting high profile people. Told them where at least two of them were artists. One of them is singer, and the other one was actress, who were arrested, because, the, Israeli government claimed that they, spread, incitement posts. But when you look into those posts, it doesn't really like how they define incitement. Yeah, it's very vague. Previously, and this is not new. We've been witnessing this for years. A few years ago, they've arrested the Palestinian, poem, the tour, the reason she published a post or about online or put online. And she was, saying and that resist my people resist and resistance could take any form you can resist if you paint, painting or you can write, a piece of apple. Yeah. Poetry. So they, they, arrested her and sentenced her, because they classified the word resist. My people resist as incitement. So this is how those vague terms are usually weaponized in the region. There are other victims because sometimes they use victims such as national security. So how could you define national security? Because it's very vague. If you, for example, criticize the government, this could be something that they count as a national security. So we're speaking about those vague terms that are usually weaponized, but also, going back to Palestine. The Israeli government has not only been arresting Palestinians just for posting online. The Israeli government back in 2015 established, a whole unit. It's called the Cyber Unit, where they are monitoring and documenting, Palestine content that documents war crimes. And they are calling that as incitement. They're escalating this to the social media platforms voluntarily, like the government invested in this unit they are, and making those all those human and financial resources to send voluntarily those requests to the social media platforms, asking them to take down this content now, social, they get. Money into people literally reporting a post. They established, a unit that is part of the Ministry of Justice, which basically they hired people to do this work, and they are sending, hundreds of thousands of posts to the social media platforms. Now, going back again to the transparency point, the social media platforms, even within their so-called transparency report that they usually publish, and usually they don't put any thing about those volunteer requests. The only thing that they could there is, legal request, which none of those hundreds of thousands of requests are, are, are legal. They are all voluntary. The government is voluntarily doing that to the social media platforms now, again, because of the lack of transparency, we don't know what the social media platforms are doing with those requests. But according to the Israeli government, the before October 7th, before this ongoing genocide in Gaza Strip, the and according exactly I think to the numbers in 2019, the, the social media platforms were accepting between 87 to 90% of those is collated requests. Now, this ongoing genocide started in October 7th, 2023, a month and a week later, like in mid November, there was a report that was citing the Israeli cyber unit, who said that social media platforms are accepting 94% of those voluntary requests and they are taking down that content. And this is directly leading to censoring Palestine related content. And when I say Palestine related content, it's not only the content that Palestinians are putting online, it's content that could be in any language and posted from anywhere around the world. But it only has to do with what's going on in Palestine and with criticizing Israel and its war crimes. And people could be posting that just say, either we stand in solidarity with people who are in Gaza or to say, stop the genocide and this content is being, disproportionately, censored. It's taken down. And, and we don't know what social media platforms are doing with that. Some of the videos that or reels that has been taken down, according to some reports, they didn't even gain one view. So some. Yeah. So we're speaking about content that is censored even before it ce ly, which is. This obviously has to be on the, on the social media platform side. Like it can't just be, for example, this cyber unit. That's. Yes. It's not only there, but that's like it is a systematic effort to silence the the voices. We're speaking about systematic efforts from the Israeli government side, but also from the social media platform side, because also we've been arguing for quite a long time that social media content moderation policies are biased against Palestinians. And the companies were always in denying. But because we've been asking them to conduct the human rights due diligence. And basically I'm speaking here about meta, they accepted our challenge, after it was recommended by the metas Oversight Board. And, in the aftermath of May events 2021. And when that, when the results of that human rights due diligence was published in September 2022, it confirmed our argument that content moderation policies are biased against Palestinians. They're largely moderating Palestinian Arabic content, barely moderating Israeli Hebrew content, leaving us with dehumanizing violent speech. That is labeling Palestinians and stereotyping them as less than a human being. And our documentation for human rights violations has been taken down. So that was before all this started. Now, with this ongoing genocide on the ground escalating, we're seeing more in depth, discrimination, because we've also documented cases where there is, where there is bias, even in, the, A.I. generated, content that they are revealing. For example, on meta, when people were using the automatic translation on Instagram for the bias, one of the people has in his bio Palestinian Palestine flag and then the word Alhamdulillah, which means praise to God or thanks God. And when he used the automatic translation, it's a terrorist Palestine flag. Praise to God. So they are labeling Palestinians as terrorists. In other context, the AI generated stickers on WhatsApp. We're also framing Palestinian Muslim children as children, as a child who has a gun. But when we were asking for an Israeli soldier, as a soldier who's actively carrying a gun, we've got a sticker for, a man in the soldier uniform that doesn't have a gun, which basically direct bias against Palestinians and framing and labeling Palestinians as people who are either terrorists or involved actively in, and military and military militarization. So those are two cases, but they are not the only they are part of. Yeah, they are part of a bigger thing. And one important thing to mention here as. There is other ways to suppress people voices not only taking down or suspend their accounts, because sometimes they keep our content online, but they do a tactic that is called shadow banning, where they reduce our reachability and visibility so people won't be able to see us. My account, for example, on Instagram, is unseen. Like if you look for my name, you need to type my full name to see my account. And sometimes, sometimes, and whenever I'm posting something, even if it's highly shared, I don't get high reachability or, visibility because I am shadow banned. And again, I am someone who's focusing on a niche on digital rights. But there are Palestinians in Gaza Strip who are documenting everything that's going on on the ground, who are sharing life saving information for their people, and they are shadow banned. So this means that those measurements, the content take down the account suspension and the shadow banning, among other measurements, are preventing people from accessing life saving information in times of genocide and are preventing journalists from doing their job like you are preventing them from exercising their right to labor. And this. That said, we're just speaking about those two rights. We didn't even speak about the right to freedom of expression or gathering and assembly or political participation or anything like that, where just to speak on nondiscrimination. We're just speaking about very basic, fundamental things. And what is platforms like meta and now is what is the response has been since October 7th of last year. In terms of, you know, addressing the issue of shadow banning and censorship, what is the responses from from those platforms being. Well, first of all, since Elon Musk took over Twitter, Twitter stopped responding to civil society. So, yeah. That's like the, You know, that he was like, he took over and then he dissolved the Trust and Safety Council. He's like, yeah, yeah, I'm not buying this. That's the first one. But with meta and since the beginning of this, ongoing genocide, we've seen a lot of disinformation. Elon Musk himself, when the war started, he shared a tweet that has two accounts where he was asking people to follow those accounts, to follow up on the news, and Israel and Palestine. And those two accounts were well known for sharing disinformation. His tweet he he took down his tweet after being like criticized a lot. But when he took take it down, I think I think I'm not sure about the number, but it was seen by over 10 million people, which is exactly. That's the one thing. The other thing when it comes to meta and because meta, they usually have something called trusted partners program. They usually ask their civil society partners to escalate cases to them, and they will look into those cases. But this is neither efficient nor appropriate, especially in times of genocide. Because companies need to invest more, they need to hire more content moderators who understand local context and who are aware of political nuances. So they would be looking into that proactively and taking protective measures, not only firefighting. When there is a crisis happening on the ground, they've never done anything proactively to protect people. We've been alarming the bill for quite a long time, saying what happened in May 2021, when definitely or might happen again at any time. And we were asking them, are you prepared? And we've heard that before October 7th. Yeah, we are ready if anything happened. Because after the human rights due diligence Kim came up, they were well ready, were prepared, and then we were sudden because nothing was ready. And even their Hebrew hostile speech classifiers that they claimed that they completed work on. And they reported that to their oversight board in September 2023, just a couple of weeks before the war started. When the war started, one of the major investigations revealed that their host Hebrew hostile speech classifier are not efficiently working. They are not working. They designed the hostile speech classifier, but they said we didn't have the data to train it, so it's basically not working. So what should we do with your classifier? If it's if it doesn't work, then it doesn't look into the hostile speech that has been dehumanizing, stereotyping and labeling Palestinians. Well. The yeah. There's so much that so much like to unpack, like a blanket. I'm sorry. That's a lot. I know. If you're comfortable to speak about your own experiences, what have been some of the challenges you faced digitally as a, as a woman human rights defender? Well, not only digitally, but also, you know, as a result of the the human rights work that you are doing. What are some of the biggest challenges you face? Well, as a human rights defender in Palestine, there are different challenges that. We could speak about. We can speak about, spyware and malware that has been used against human rights defenders previously. And the always, like, being terrified of getting those on your devices, like, I do have that kind of, thing and that, that kind of fear in my mind all the time. That's the 1 or 1 thing as a Palestinian woman, human rights defenders sitting there in the West Bank. Yeah. But also we face different types of, of, threats we face, like all the time, the technology facilitating gender based violence. We all. See, expand on that a little bit more. For me, when you say technology. Facilitated gender based violence. So usually we use this term when women are harassed online or poorly paid or blackmailed or whatever, like any kind of. Yeah, defamation smear, is weaponized against human rights defenders generally. But in conservative societies, women has an extra layer of struggle because this could be weaponized against you all the time. So we definitely are always, terrified of technology facilitated, gender based violence. And because we knew for sure that social media platforms are not, proactively, monitoring their platforms, usually they even ask us to escalate those cases whenever there are, gender based violence attacks on women activists or queer community or whatever. So that's the other thing. But also from the work that I do, I sometimes receive messages or comments on my posts, that, that is threatening me for the work that I'm doing. Especially whenever I'm speaking about censorship, on Palestine related content. There. Yeah. And I'm not an exception. I'm one of millions of Palestinians who are receiving the death threats or, different kind of comments and their direct messages that are usually, terrifying, scary and annoying. And the other thing is, the censorship from social media platforms. I personally, as I mentioned before, my Instagram account is shadow banned. And despite the huge numbers of shares that I usually get and the videos and the content that I produce for people who are interested in digital rights, online censorship, surveillance, among other things. I usually get shadow banned because I criticize meta using Meta's platforms. So and discrimination against. Yeah. Yes. So usually, my content doesn't get reach. My views. If I post a selfie now, I might get a thousand. Like if it's a story, I might get me a couple or a few thousand views. But whenever I'm posting a video that I'm explaining, what is shadow banning when or what shadow banning when someone then my content is barely seen. And yeah, this is by numbers. I've escalated this case. No. No proper feedback, nothing. And the technical aspects of Shadow Bed and let's say, for example, you know, you might carry a little story and, and I should say that video, does that mean that meta would also, you know, censor or put the views on my screen. Because I'm shooting, you. Know, it's it depends. Cause so there is something about meta that when we started a couple of years ago speaking about shadow banning, they were saying that our algorithms encourage that authentic original content. And whenever you share things because it's shared, it might just get let's give you less views. And although we disagree with this and we were arguing, arguing that this is a silencing of people's voices, but my account, because I'm speaking about like a very personal first hand experience, I create my content. So it is authentic, original content. It's my voice, it's my videos, it's my share of graphs that I put online. And I know that people are interested. Some pages that shares my content has over a million followers. Then the reachability is very low. Yeah, exactly. And I, whenever it comes to the story is I will get 100 views. But if but but yeah, this is, this is authentic content. My, my, my, my, self is also like, authentic on the content. And they would usually say, oh yeah. But like people usually love the personalized thing, but people before they open my story, they didn't know if this is a selfie or it's a video that is a synthesizing metaphor. It's self-censorship. And this video might be anything else. So we need to speak about this. And they usually they are in denial case. But this is not the first time that we're seeing them in denial previously. And I've been involved and take accountability for for around a decade. Previously we were telling them that the word shaheed, is quiet, censored, like like any post that has the word shaheed is we feel it censored. And they were always in denial. They were always saying, no way, no way. So the interesting part is, last year, meta asked for the policy advisory opinion of Meta's oversight board. And in that request, they said that the word Shaheed was the word that caused the highest content takedown rate on methods platforms. And when I seen that, although I was happy because, okay, we're now trying to like that is a fruitful that is a success from a digital rights defender perspective. I was very happy. Our work is fruitful now we're seeing the fruits of our work for years where we were saying that. But I knew because for few years we were saying that word and they were saying, oh no, it's not, it's not, it's not. And now we do have exactly the same scenario with the shadow banning. I'm still hopeful. I know, like, it's disappointing. It's stressful, especially in those sensitive times where the Mena region is witnessing unrest for over a year. And we're not here speaking only about Palestine and Lebanon, but we are also speaking about different all the things that are happening in Libya and Sudan and Yemen, in Syria. So we're speaking about a region that that is facing a lot of things, and where people are also living under oppressive regimes and unable to express their voices in their day to day life. So at least allow them or open this platform so they can share their opinions. Yeah. But we remain hopeful. That's why we try every day to keep challenging this, to document this, to advocate for, policy changes, because we believe and the longer, term change, because even if people are trying to change certain things to make to make it work for the short run, that doesn't mean that they will escape the censorship for a long time. That's why we believe in, long term change. Okay, okay, I think I have two more. Two more questions for you. The first one is if you can tell our listeners a bit more about algorithms right now, if I think of, you know, when Instagram first came out, our content and our timeline was basically just, you know, chronological until we have that, algorithm and suddenly it's, you know, based on our likes and our interests and everything. So can you speak a bit more about what does that mean? And algorithm and, and the bias essentially of, let's say, you know, make this algorithm, how that works in the favor of, of, you know, coming next. Well, criminalizing human rights defenders by censoring, Palestinian content. Yes, of course. So. Okay. I want to start from, a different starting point. I want to start from the, the Democratic revolution that started in the Mena region in 2010, where people thought that we are escaping authoritarianism by utilizing using the tech platforms, or let's call them tech companies, because we cannot come to this, tech companies, to mobilize and organize and to challenge the, long time, like, long term oppression that they've been facing for quite a long time. They or activists were not aware at that time that they are escaping authoritarianism to digital authoritarianism. Now, we are at a point where governments are censoring our voices, are oppressing us, but also social media platforms are doing the same. Now. Tech platforms are, at the end of the day, companies and what they care about is making more profit on two sides, on two ends. The first one is the financial side and the other one is the political side because they are legally and politically accountable in certain cases, for example, yeah, they're not accountable. And the different global majority countries, they are legally and politically accountable. And the United States and Europe and certain countries and the global north, where there is legislations that are designed to protect people and their rights, like the GDPR, regulate the relationship between companies and users. And Europe, the DSA or the Digital Service Act, forced tech platforms to announce the numbers of their content moderators in different languages, different dialects in Europe. We've been demanding this from meta for ever. We've never got this information. Why? Because we are not holding them accountable legally. So that said, we are speaking about companies that instead of just opening your feed back to your newsfeed, sorry newsfeed to see whatever you want, they are designing that based on your behavior. They are looking into your other activities, into other posts that you like and you show more. You show you they show you more. Exactly. That's one thing. And the other thing is because they think that political content or documentation of war crimes is bringing them a lot of, headache. Recently this year, they've done something where they, they've done they've changed something in the settings where now people need to go to the settings and change the settings to say that we are interested in seeing political or sensitive content or whatever they call it, so they can see what's happening around the world. Otherwise you will be seeing social media influencers traveling, trying food around the world, and that's the pinky life that they are living. And we need to be convinced that this is what people are voicing. Our, are living. So they are like, there's something called the echo chamber where people are hearing already, like, that's, that's part of the algorithm system where you are hearing what people like minded people are saying, or posting online. Now with this, you you even like, you're changing even the, echo chamber. You are convincing people that this is the echo chamber. You need to be involved in this because because influences are making money while you are scrolling down. Companies are making money. This is a profitable content. Most of human rights defenders who are documenting war crimes won't be, promoting and paying money for the companies. So there are different dynamics that, at the end of the day, shapes how they are thinking about the algorithms and how is that used or weaponized to, design what we are seeing online? I hope I've answered your question. Yeah, you answered my question. And I think I mean, it's also, you know, to explain to people that, by the way, and by way of that explanation, you know, is clear proof of the of the bias of the algorithm, because even if, the content that shows up on your feed is supposed to be based on what you like. And if we let's say I go to your page and I'm looking at all of your videos, then the algorithm should put that back onto me. So thank you. Yes. But now it doesn't do that. Exactly, exactly. To endorse for people who for people who want to, you know, take the activism online and continue to do that to support the Palestinian cause, but not only the Palestinian cause, you know, all other human rights causes. Why did you advise on how to, let's say, beat the algorithm if they easily? Well, many people are doing, or are using different tactics to try to challenge the algorithms. Some of them use different stickers. Some of them they called the words and use symbols between different letters. Some of them add more spaces. Some others are using, some are using sometimes pictured here and there to break the algorithm. Them, for example between ten posts or three posts, like about a human right. You will put a selfie to say hi. Breaking algorithms. But again, from like I'm a bit skeptical whenever it comes to that because that is a short term thing. Whenever you are changing and the way how you write the word Palestine, then you might change it today, tomorrow. But at the end of the day, the algorithms will be trained to know this one thing, and it's sometimes working by the consequence of the letters, not necessarily how close they are. That's one thing. But the other thing also, it is affecting our narrative, because if people want to understand what's happening and Sudan right now or in Palestine, right now, they will type the word Palestine. And if we are changing in the way, how Palestine where it is, because sometimes people even. Yeah, the dots in between dots. Sometimes they use watermelon simple sticker, some other times they change that. So other people who are interested in Palestine, whenever they are typing the word Palestine, they won't find anything about Palestine. They might find like some content that is outdated or about previous things, but like not the ongoing thing now. So with all due respect to the different tactics that are used to change or to challenge that, especially those the coding part of thing, I think those are a bit tricky and they are, undermining the documentation and everything going on. Although I do understand why people are doing that. But I think the breaking algo one is usually interesting and is usually helping, people. Some other people would, use different other tactics, such as using there is certain stickers, for example, on Instagram at the ready ones so they can be shown differently. So there are those tactics. But again, I believe in systematic change. That's why we need to look into the policy changes. We need to join the forces with other people because it's not only about Palestine, it's about the global majority countries left behind because we don't have political power. And we we're not we don't have also ads purchasing power. Like if you if we look into the Mena region, Israel ads purchased power according to the numbers from 20 to 20, Israel and ads purchasing power is equivalent to Jordan, Palestine and Egypt combined. Interests in Egypt that has 100 million people. Well, so. And sorry, I'm gonna ask you. Guys. Interesting conversation. You know, we we spoke a lot about censoring, you know, pro-Palestinian content, we hope. Has there been any feedback from some platforms like meta in terms of, for example, I, you know, I've seen, content of Israeli soldiers, you know, saying disgusting things and, you know, that's not being censored. And surely people are reporting this, has has that been addressed with, with social media companies? Yeah. We've, we've been escalating that. But again, first of all, the the main problem is they are not looking into that proactively. So they post that they got exposure, they stereotype Palestinians, they label us. And then we will see what will happen. The other thing, as, there is a special treatment on the on the, social on, on the tech platforms, policies that give certain exceptions to political leaders, because. Yeah, definitely. That's why usually political leaders can share whatever they want, even return policy. Yes, there is, political leaders, thing, some companies were looking into that after, Trump ban, a few years ago. But now there is still this exception. And they claim that people should be able to see whatever their political leaders are saying, with no filters or with no censorship or moderation. And that's problematic from my point of view. Political leaders should have extra layer of censorship cause they are shaping policies, they are influencing their own people, and they are taking people into, more polarized communities, especially if they are manipulating people. And we've seen, like the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, he shared, he himself, at the beginning of this genocide, shared AI generated picture about a burned body of a child. And no one has taken that down. And even we're seeing a videos, on the different Israeli military pages, first of all, military pages online. I'm not okay with that because they are militarizing our online spaces. I don't have to see to see a justification of the Israeli forces to explain to me how and why did they bomb this building? And they would be saying, oh, this is a residential building. But, you know, like we need to bomb it because it has blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The whole propaganda they usually use. So the justification of violence is not okay. We shouldn't be accepting that. However, social media platforms are accepting that are keeping this content online. And then we go to the Israeli soldiers is, content that they either are mocking Palestinians. They are sometimes using different like, toys for the children in Gaza or whatever. And they're putting that online. Yeah, some even dating apps, you know, like since the beginning of this genocide, this was a hot topic. At the beginning of it, they were posting pictures on their, dating apps about being and, in Gaza or, being an Palestinian woman, underwears or something like that, which is disgusting from one hand, but also, some, some companies said that this doesn't violate our community standards. So, yeah, here we go again to what is your community standards? What does it mean to have those policies?