How To Use Social Media in Times of Censorship

The importance of social media today

HAMZAH SAADAH: Social media is really important. It has its good things and then its benefits, and its downfall when you get censored. But, yeah, social media, even with censorship, if you do get something to get pushed out there to reach millions of people, it could be very powerful. It’s a powerful tool, you know. We’ve seen this happen since, you know, October 7, with the rise of pro-Palestinian content over all social media platforms, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. We’ve seen protests with millions of people attending in countries like Indonesia and other countries. And that wouldn’t have happened without social media.

You can post 100 videos even if 1% goes viral, there you go. You did it.

No one would have seen what’s happening in Gaza. Motaz Azaiza wouldn’t have had a platform to show what is going on in Gaza, right? So, you know, social media is very important to get the word out there. And, yeah, censorship is obviously a huge thing, but you know, you can post 100 videos even if 1% goes viral, there you go. You did it. It’s a victory to me, and you’ll have protests, like 400,000 people in Washington, DC, protesting for Palestine. We’ve never seen that in the world like ever, [it’s been the] first time in history, and that’s because of social media.

JACOB BERGER: Social media is so important. This is one of the first genocides to be fully live-streamed in real-time. One of the quotes that I love to say is, “The revolution will not be televised.” And that’s not referencing whether it’s on TV or social media. That’s talking about the mind, until we have a revolution of the mind, things will not change. Social media is incredibly powerful and allows us to connect to people all over the world. And I speak to people from Gaza and in Gaza regularly, and they tell me, “Jacob, we are feeling left behind by the world. They are slaughtering us.” But watching content from creators, seeing the rallies, and seeing people in the streets for us, gives them hope.

So social media is incredibly powerful, and we are in a way. That’s why the powers that be want to try and shut us down at Meta. And that’s why they hate TikTok because they can’t control TikTok. We’ve spoken to people at TikTok. TikTok has basically said, “We’re fine with Palestine, as long as it’s getting the views. We’re not going to censor that.” At least that’s on my side. So social media, incredibly important, is one of the most powerful tools for the movement. And we need to keep doubling down, and people need to not be scared to make content, you need to grow a pair of balls and post something.

AMANI AL KHATAHTBEH: That’s true, the revolution will not be televised, but it will be live-streamed. I think this is what speaks to the power of social media today. Honestly, the best way that I can answer that question is by posing one to all of you guys. I would like you to raise your hand if you have ever posted something about Palestine on social media and have experienced censorship that can look like your algorithm is messed up. Content suppression can look like having your features disabled. People were shooting their hands up in the air before I even finished the question. That’s a testament to the power of social media today, what we’re doing is undermining the authority of the institutions and the establishments that have been dictating our understanding of the world for far too long. And with social media, we’re democratizing that narrative.

Now, instead of having the media speak on our behalf, speak on top of us, or silence us, social media is placing it in our own hands to tell our story for ourselves, and we’ve all seen how powerful that is. The revolution will never be televised, but we will have brave souls that are on the ground who are going to whip out their phones, whip out their cameras, whip out their microphones, and put everything on the line to show people what’s really happening right before their eyes and look at what resulted.

For the first time in history, social media posts that we’ve all shared, that we’ve all seen on our news feeds and timelines are being used as evidence in international courts for war crimes.

Because of it, for the first time in history, social media posts that we’ve all shared, that we’ve all seen on our news feeds and timelines are being used as evidence in international courts for war crimes. This is unprecedented, and every single person who has hit share has had a part to do with that. This is why, for the longest time, I rejected this idea of armchair activism to discount people in past years that, “Oh, you know, you’re just sitting at home, you’re sitting on your couch, all you’re doing is retweeting. All you’re doing is posting about it on your social media.” That has an impact, and every single person has a role in that, no matter how many bulls you have, no matter what you think your reach is, you have that power literally in your back pocket now.

ALI AWAD: You can look at the good in so many situations and you can look at the bad. We obviously have this double-edged sword that’s social media. And if you’re scrolling online every single day and all you’re really doing is just consuming garbage, not doing anything with it, and even worse, you’re comparing yourself to this unrealistic standard that they put out on social media, and you do nothing positive with it, you just waste your time. You wait until it’s enough to make you pass out, and then you wake up again. Do it again. You’re using it wrong. That’s the bad side.

Now the good side, even with all the suppression, even with all the indoctrination, and even with all the negative, we are still able to make a huge impact in the world. Things that we’re posting on social media are getting national and international attention, and never underestimate that power of attention, because that’s probably the best currency that we have right now. You have to make them pay attention to you. And if the standard for that is just to click a couple of buttons and reshare and post, that’s the lowest it will ever be. And if you can’t do that, I will just say I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.

Democratizing social media and dealing with censorship

AMANI: Well, I would say that with our platform, we’ve broken through because we’ve been doing this for so long. You know, I’ve had Muslim Girl since I was a teenager, it’s been almost a decade now that it’s been using social media the way that it has to build up an audience, to build a community online that we lack in real life. But I have to admit, and this is the first time that I have talked about this publicly, but this past year has been the hardest year for Muslim Girl since I started it, the absolute hardest. After October 7 hit, we saw a very significant change in the visibility of our content. Obviously, as an editorial team, we felt that it was necessary to pivot all of our attention to creating content covering what’s happening in this ongoing genocide.

At the end of the day, social media isn’t just a plaything, is it? It isn’t just for fun. These are tools that we get to enjoy. Our generation gets to have access to more than any other generation in history, and that’s a moral responsibility. And so, you have to take that moral responsibility very heavily. What are you using yours for? What are you using these resources available at your fingertips for?

For us, there was no other answer than to turn all of our attention on Palestine, and the consequences of that have been swift from watching the visibility decrease across our platforms to seeing even the breakdown of a lot of relationships that we’ve had with partners, with sponsors, with advertisers that either don’t want to advertise alongside Palestine content or are afraid of alienating their investors or their followers or audiences, or causing a backlash by aligning with the platform that is very pro-Palestine. But I think the difference is seeing how difficult it is to make it to talk back to genocide on social media. So we’ve been lucky. We’ve been building up really inspiring community for years now, many of whom are in this room, which I’m very grateful for. And those people are the ones that continue to support us day in and day out. And that’s why for us, at the end of the day, no matter how hard it gets, remaining authentic to our voices is the most important thing.

HAMZAH: Just to add to that, If you look at the Hadid sisters, for example, I mean, they didn’t start off saying, ‘Free Palestine, free Palestine.” They built themselves. They built themselves up with modeling and other stuff. And similarly, I did that. I built my platform with gaming.

I had millions of followers before October 7 of gaming and entertaining videos and just TikTok videos. And then I shifted my content after I had millions to Palestinian content, so I used my existing followers to promote that. So if you start off promoting Palestine and pro-Palestinian [content] with no followers, you’re more than likely going to get censored and shadow-banned. So try to fill it in with other types of videos, to get those views and shift your people over to more pro-Palestinian content. And that’s exactly what I did, and I’m going to continue to do.

JACOB: Censorship is definitely a very real issue. I mean, I’ve been, for those of you who don’t know I’ve been so I’ve been a TV film actor for 14 years. I went viral in 2017 for my comedy sketches, and I’ve been dealing with Shadow bans in my whole career. Especially, I’ve always been an activist. I’ve spoken out for Black Lives Matter, spoken out for immigrants, LGBTQ, and anything to think of, but the amount of suppression on this is definitely palpable. But at the end of the day, I can sleep at night knowing that I’m doing my part. I’m not afraid to lose my page. We have resources to get pages back if things get do get taken.

I’m someone who’s literally been to Egypt and helped people from Gaza on the ground, and I still don’t think I’m doing enough.

And we all know people who use this fear to not post about Palestine. They’re like, “Oh, I don’t want my page to be at risk.” It’s bullshit. Like, don’t be scared to post. We all need to do more. I’m someone who’s literally been to Egypt and helped people from Gaza on the ground, and I still don’t think I’m doing enough. So everyone needs to do more. And I’m tired of people worrying about censorship. My page has never been strong enough thanks to the love and compassion that drives in the Muslim world and standing with all of you. So just keep posting. Don’t be afraid about it. We can make a new page, alright? If we’re loud, then they can’t stop us.

ALI: I posted that I would be speaking at ArabCon, I said I’ll donate 100 tickets to the event. All you have to do is just comment the word “ArabCon.” And guess what Facebook did? They censored the word ArabCon, so none of the comments showed up. So every single one, I have to go in and manually unhide it. So it’s just a little bit of extra effort, but it’s okay. If you don’t fight now, there’s nothing else that could possibly be more important. And I’ll also say this, when you find your tribe, when you find your people, they have your back, no matter what.

The first day I posted a picture of the Palestinian flag, had 1000s of lawyers nationwide boycott me and say, “Don’t go to his events, don’t do business with him.” And that was okay because I expected sort of the backlash. But what really hurt was the people who were my friends, the people who were my clients, the people that I’ve been doing business with for years now, showed me their true colors. And I just came to the conclusion that if you don’t believe in my right to exist, you can’t have my money at the very least.

So it’s important for us to start doing business with people that support us. It’s important for us to spend our money within our own local communities, it’s important for us to go to the person who might have an inferior product, that might be more expensive, but you’re still willing to spend your money with them, because they believe in what you believe in. Social media. Will find your tribe. Use social media. Find your tribe, and come out to these events. It’s not a waste of time. We’re all human beings here. You can come up to us. You can talk to us. It’s normal. And Wallahi, the people in Gaza see it every day. The least that we can do is just keep them in our minds, keep them in our hearts, and speak up. I promise you, it’s worth it. I promise you, it is.

The impact of not succumbing to censorship

HAMZAH: These social media platforms are Zionist-run. Every single one of them, they are owned by by Zionists, right? And, and they’re too big to do anything. What you could do is, is constantly post. And, I said this earlier but if you post 100 videos and 1% makes it through, that’s good enough. That’s a victory. So you keep doing that, you keep posting. One of my most viral videos is me speaking to two IDF soldiers. They said they wanted to unalive Palestinians and it was very disgusting.

They’re trying to silence you, to say, “Hey, okay, fine. You know, it’s not, it’s not going to work. I’ll just try something else.” No, you just keep going. It’ll happen.

When I first posted, it, received zero views. I posted it over 150 times. It was a span of maybe four days. I just tried posting, posting, posting, and then when I did make it through, it got 2 million views in an hour. It reached news channels and Russian News TV wanted it. A lot of people wanted to use it. So you just got to keep going and it’ll happen. You’ll eventually break through. It might not happen overnight, but you want to give up. I mean, they want you to give up. They’re trying to silence you, to say, “Hey, okay, fine. You know, it’s not, it’s not going to work. I’ll just try something else.” No, you just keep going. It’ll happen.

JACOB: There’s a very bad habit of co-opting the Palestinian cause that doesn’t actually do anything online as influencers. They might be on TikTok live, talking and yapping, but they don’t raise money. They don’t post direct action flyers. And they’ll be like, “Oh, I’m scared to lose my page. I don’t want to post this thing about what happened in West Bank.” Again, [that’s] bullshit. You all have to do more. We need to amplify the voices of the people of Gaza and the people of the West Bank because their stories are not being told.

I get messages every day from people in Gaza and every story is worse than the next. So we need to use our platforms to let their voices be heard because they don’t want to be forgotten. They don’t want to just be forgotten. So it’s our duty, especially as Americans, the privilege that we have living here in America, to tell their stories and not be scared of the consequences.

AMANI: I also want to add to that, to say that it really isn’t about the numbers. It really isn’t. It’s so easy to get caught up in the views, the followers, the likes that you have. But has any of you heard of the butterfly effect? The Butterfly Effect is the theory that just the flutter of a butterfly wing can cause a chain of effects that changes the course of history. So when people come to me and say, Hey, how can I make an impact? I have like, five followers, you don’t know how that wave is going to ripple out right in the pond of your community, of your your friends, of your families. You don’t know how many people are impacted. Everything is energy.

All that matters at the end of the day is you servicing your conscience as a human being that exists in the prism that we’re in today.

Everything is the energy that we put out there into the world, right? We believe in Islam that the core of everything is (Al Niyyah) the intention. And I think that’s a universal concept, as long as you are making the choices that matter to you with the right intentions, it’s impossible for you not to reshare that story or to post that image or to talk about this event that’s happening, right? All that matters at the end of the day is you servicing your conscience as a human being that exists in the prism that we’re in today.

That’s the role that you were chosen to have. That’s your purpose. So it’s all about making your purpose actualized, and that is independent of any of the numbers, that’s independent of any of the tactics that they’re going to try to silence us, which I would have to agree, is unavoidable. It’s going to happen every time we’re on the right side of history, we’re met with adversity, it’s expected. Take that as a sign that you’re doing the right thing. The harder they try to silence us, the more powerful we are.

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