Is Instagram shadow banning users for posting on Israel-Hamas War?

"I don't post about the issue anymore on social media," says 27-year-old Ashwin from Chennai to dailyO. The issue he's referring to is the Israel-Hamas war. He stopped posting about this 'issue' after experiencing shadow banning on Instagram, a ban many users, including those from India, have complained about since they began discussing the war, particularly in a pro-Palestine context.

Now, let's start from the beginning. By now, you know that Israel and Hamas are at war. People, whether pro-Palestine or not, are actively posting about it on social media. This has sparked a social media war between supporters of both sides.

However, recently, many people have been complaining about their accounts not reaching as many people as they generally do, or accounts not receiving any engagement. And, when we say not getting any engagement, we mean merely 2-3 people in the worst cases.

What

• Just like Ashwin, who has only 3-4 views on his Instagram posts (he generally gets more than 400), other users in India are also facing such bans.

• For instance, Nitasha Khushwaha, a 29-year-old illustrator and painter from Noida, Uttar Pradesh, also told us that her Instagram account was shadowbanned for 24 hours for sharing one of a painter's artworks.

Later, Nitasha realized that she wasn't alone in her situation. The artist whose artwork Nitasha reposted also had their account shadow-banned. Here's the post that she shared:

What is shadow banning, and what is Instagram's policy on shadow bans?

• Shadow ban refers to the act of hiding or restricting a user's content without informing the user that it's happening. If you're shadowbanned, your content won't appear on anyone's feed, Explore, or hashtag pages unless they already follow you. 
• Instagram also has a similar policy, and Instagram can shadow-ban you for violating Instagram rules and community guidelines or posting inappropriate content. 

A common Pattern 

What we have observed about the posts: 

• Generally, these kinds of bans last for two weeks. However, we have noticed that for posts like this, the ban typically lasts for only a day or is limited to specific posts.
• Another pattern we observed is that these posts were often critical of Israel's government, supportive of Palestine, or related to Palestine in general, on a large scale.

READ MORE: Who has what at stake in the Israel-Hamas War?

Not limited to India 

These complaints were not limited to India. Many people took to Twitter to complain about similar situations. These people are from across the globe. Check out some complaints:

As of now, there is no official statement from Instagram about the ban.

DailyO has also tried reaching out to Instagram, and the story will be updated once they get back to us. 

READ MORE: Israel okays limited aid for Gaza as death toll in the war reaches 4800