Digital Rights Weekly Update: 19 - 24 December

Anti-Palestinian Billionaires Can Now Control What TikTok Users See

The Intercept

The TikTok deal announced on Thursday poses a fundamental threat to free and honest discourse about Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Under the reported deal, the Chinese company that owns the short-video social media app, ByteDance, will transfer control of TikTok’s algorithm and other U.S. operations to a new consortium of investors led by the U.S. technology company Oracle. The long-gestating deal will give Oracle’s billionaire pro-Trump board members Larry Ellison and Safra Catz the power to impose their anti-Palestinian agenda over the content that TikTok users see. Most mainstream U.S. media coverage of the TikTok deal has completely ignored the explicitly anti-Palestinian agenda of its biggest Western investors. TikTok has played a critical role in helping hundreds of millions of users see the ugly reality of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

Is Israel’s government waging war on Al Jazeera and the media?

Al Jazeera

The Israeli government is cracking down on critical media outlets, giving it unprecedented control over how its actions are presented to its citizens. Among the moves is the so-called Al Jazeera Law, which allows the government to shut down foreign media outlets on national security grounds. On Tuesday, the Israeli parliament approved the extension of the law for two years after it was introduced during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza to essentially stop Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel. Separately, the government is also moving to shut down the popular Army Radio network, one of two publicly funded Israeli news outlets. The radio station is often criticised by the Israeli right wing, which views Army Radio as being biased against it. Israelis are still reliant on receiving their news from traditional outlets with about half relying on broadcast news for information on current affairs and about a third similarly relying upon radio stations.

Project Censored’s list of buried stories hits half-century mark

CVILLE

Since Oct 7, 2023, Meta has executed a massive censorship campaign on Facebook and Instagram, removing or suppressing posts critical of Israel or supportive of Palestinians, Drop Site News reported in April 2025. The report called it “the largest mass censorship operation in modern history,” based on internal Meta data provided by whistleblowers and confirmed by multiple sources inside the company. Meta reportedly complied with 94 percent of takedown requests from Israel—the single largest originator of content removals worldwide—affecting an estimated 38.8 million posts. While most requests were classified under “terrorism” or “violence and incitement,” the complaints all used identical language regardless of the content, linking to an average of 15 posts each without describing the posts themselves. The campaign disproportionately targets users from Arab and Muslim-majority nations but has a global reach, affecting posts in over 60 countries. Drop Site News warned that Meta’s AI moderation tools are being trained on these takedowns, potentially embedding this censorship into future automated content decisions.

Israel’s Tactics in Digital Diplomacy and the Shaping of Attitudes Among Younger Generations

Progress Center for Policies

Over the past decade, digital platforms have become a central arena for the production of political meaning and the formation of public attitudes, particularly among younger generations. Generation Z is among the groups most affected by this transformation, given its heavy reliance on social media as a primary source of news and knowledge. In this context, international conflicts are no longer managed exclusively through military tools or traditional diplomatic channels; instead, they increasingly intersect with digital communication strategies, algorithms, and narrative construction. This paper offers a concise analytical examination of how Israel engages with this shift by analyzing its digital communication tactics directed at Generation Z, within a broader framework commonly described as narrative and consciousness warfare in the digital age. The paper aims to provide a non-normative reading that focuses on tools, mechanisms, and limitations, without adopting a mobilizing or evaluative discourse.