A former Meta engineer has filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging bias in handling posts related to the Israel-Hamas war. He claims that Meta fired him for trying to help fix bugs causing the suppression of Palestinian Instagram posts.
According to Reuters, Ferras Hamad, a Palestinian-American engineer, had been on Meta's machine learning team since 2021. He filed the lawsuit in a California state court, citing discrimination, wrongful termination, and other violations related to his dismissal in February of this year.
In his lawsuit, Hamad accuses Meta of bias against Palestinians, stating that the company removed internal messages from employees about the deaths of their relatives in Gaza and investigated the use of Palestinian flag emojis by staff. He contrasts this with the lack of investigations into employees using Israeli or Ukrainian flags in similar contexts.
Hamad asserts that he was "only trying to correct bugs that led to the reduced reach of Palestinian posts on Instagram" and that this effort resulted in his termination.
