Digital Rights Weekly Update: 20 - 26 March 2026

News Digest

Why are Palestinian books struggling to be seen on Amazon?

The New Arab

n late October 2023, Massachusetts-based independent publisher Interlink Publishing, one of the few Palestinian-owned publishers in the United States, launched a major promotion of its Palestinian catalogue on Amazon Ads. The aim, Harrison Williams, Interlink's Production and Design Director, explained, was to counter "the one-sided narrative that portrays Palestinians in such a dehumanising manner." The campaign included 43 titles, backed by an unusually large ad spend for the small publisher. But the campaign quickly ran into obstacles. Amazon Ads rejected roughly half of the titles, preventing books such as Wrestling with Zionism: Jewish Voices of Dissent, We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon, The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist, Palestine Hijacked: How Zionism Forged an Apartheid State from River to Sea, and Night in Gaza from appearing in sponsored placements or keyword searches.

The AI Divide Is Here, and Its Consequences Are Devastating

WIRED

As early as November 2023, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call detailed the existence of the AI system Habsora (The Gospel), designed to generate potential targets at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. The Gospel, just over a month into Israel’s war on Gaza, had helped to facilitate a “staggering loss of human life” and “one of the deadliest military campaigns against Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948”. During the first 35 days of fighting, 15,000 targets were attacked – an unprecedented number made possible by the processing of enormous amounts of data and the rapid generation of targets in real time. In April of the following year, +972 Magazine and Local Call published another investigation, also written by investigative journalist Yuval Abraham. It revealed the existence of Lavender, an AI based programme designed to generate targets for assassination. The system flagged suspected targets in the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, identifying 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants in the first weeks of Israel’s war on Gaza alone.

Tools of Survival: How Smartphones Have Become A Lifeline For Gazans

WIRED

Merchants estimate that tens of thousands of phones have entered Gaza since October 2025, though official data is not available. From the viewing theatre of social media feeds, commenters have pointed to the influx of smartphones as a sign that Gaza has returned to normalcy, or share conspiracies about Israeli surveillance programmes. In reality, it is a backlog of deprivation flooding the market at once. “The consumption that would normally happen over two years happened users. Education has moved entirely online, and these phones are not simply gadgets; they represent access to (or exclusion from) a future beyond life in makeshift camps in two months,” explains Haitham Al-Abdallah, a mobile-phone shop owner in Khan Younis. “The market was starving.” Before the ceasefire and at the height of Israel’s attacks on Gaza, phones cost between 100 and 300 per cent more than they did in the West Bank, roughly double or triple their prewar price, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority for Palestine. While prices have since lowered, they continue to fluctuate and are not subject to regulation.

Tech Workers Organize Against Companies’ Military Ties

The Indypendent

The de-centralized, international campaign is made up of tech workers (mostly from Google and Amazon) who want their companies to stop using their labor to create technology that is used in the genocide in Palestine, and to divest from contracts with Department of Homeland Security and the Department of War. Their impetus is convincing their employer to withdraw from Project Nimbus. Many details about Project Nimbus are unknown, but it’s clear that Google is not being straightforward with how the Israeli government is using their software. “Project Nimbus gives use of Cloud computing and AI software to the Israeli government. What we’ve officially been told by Google leadership is that it’s being used for workloads like HR,” said N. “But documents published by The Guardianand The New York Times tell us that the Cloud Workloads and facial recognition technology were being used to surveil Palestinians. It helped Israel in individually targeting people within their homes, which, of course, led to not just military target deaths, but also civilian deaths.” 

Meta ordered to pay $375m after being found liable in child exploitation case

The Guardian

A New Mexico jury on Tuesday ordered Meta to pay $375m in civil penalties after it found the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and enabled harm, including child sexual exploitation, against its users. The lawsuit – the first jury trial to find Meta liable for acts committed on its platform – was brought by the state’s attorney general office in December 2023. It followed a two-year Guardian investigation published in April of that year revealing how Facebook and Instagram had become marketplaces for child sex trafficking. That investigation was cited several times in the complaint. “The jury’s verdict is a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta’s choice to put profits over kids’ safety,” said New Mexico’s attorney general, Raúl Torrez. “Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew. Today the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough.”