Ferras Hamad, who used to be an engineer working with Meta's machine learning team, has accused the company of firing him over his handling of Palestine-related Instagram posts in a lawsuit. According to, he is accusing the company of discrimination, wrongful termination and showing a pattern of bias against Palestinians.
Hamad discovered that the video, which was taken by Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, was misclassified as pornographic. He said he received conflicting guidance on whether he was authorized to help resolve the issue but was eventually told in writing that helping troubleshoot it was part of his tasks. A month later, though, Hamad was reportedly notified that he was the subject of an investigation.
In addition to detailing the events that led to his firing in the lawsuit, Hamad also accused the company of deleting internal communication between employees talking about deaths of their relatives in Gaza. Employees that use the Palestinian flag emoji were investigated, as well, whereas those who've previously posted the Israeli or the Ukrainian flags in similar contexts weren't subjected to the same scrutiny.