Meta’s Oversight Board recently completed a nearly year-long review of the Arabic word “Shaheed” (Martyr), stating that Meta’s ban on the Arabic word commonly used to praise violence limits free speech.  

According to CyberWell founder and executive director Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, this move will lead to more pro-terror content being posted to and remaining on Meta’s platforms and the romanticization of terrorism online.

CyberWell is an innovative tech nonprofit focused on monitoring and combatting the spread of antisemitism on social media, reporting it to platform moderators based on the platform’s community standards guidelines it violates.

She shared:

“Following the largest hijacking of social media platforms on October 7 and in its aftermath by the terrorist group Hamas, Meta’s Oversight Board loosening restrictions on the content moderation practices on the word “shaheed” (martyr) on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, will lead to more pro-terror content being posted to and remaining on Meta’s platforms.

CyberWell’s latest data shows that 61% of verified online antisemitism in Arabic was consistent with open calls to violence and justification of attacks against Jews following Hamas’ October 7 massacre.

The Oversight Board decision compels Meta to allow the use of the term for ‘non-armed’ members of designated terror organizations and further forces the permitted use of the term when discussing terror organizations and events in a “neutral way.” This grey area will lead to more posts remaining online that romanticize terrorism and expand their supporter base among social media users. 

CyberWell was one of the only organizations that submitted a verified dataset based on 300 examples of the word shaheed being used to praise acts of terror on Meta’s platforms, under the status quo policy position, to the Oversight Board. This packet was submitted almost a year ago, well before Oct. 7., and some of those examples remain online today. CyberWell regularly sees the word shaheed appear in content that is flagged as highly likely to be antisemitic.

The intervention of the Oversight Board on this policy during a time of unprecedented hate online, where open calls to terror and violence against Jews have become commonplace will leave more pro-terror content online overall.  Moreover, this decision may lead to the increase of social media users, many young people, normalizing support of terror groups and romanticizing terrorists, from the Houthis to Osama Bin Laden.”

Commonly used in Arabic to mean “martyr,” shahid literally means “witness” in Qur’anic Arabic. It is a term used in Islam for Muslims who died while fulfilling jihad, a holy war.