LONDON: Instagram on Tuesday removed posts using the hashtag “#IWillLightACandletoo” in memory of the victims who died on board the Ukrainian airliner shot down by Iranian security forces two years ago.
Posts featuring the hashtag in both its English and Persian versions suddenly disappeared from the platform.
The Association of Families of the Victims of Flight PS752 started using the “#IWillLightACandletoo” hashtag several days ago as a show of solidarity before the second anniversary of the crash, but found that it had been blocked.
“It was deeply disappointing. There was nothing offensive about the hashtags, but sadly big firms like Facebook (now Meta) are easily deceived by the cyber armies of authoritarian regimes,” said the spokesperson for the association, Hamed Esmaeilion, who lost both his wife and daughter in the incident.
The social media giant apologized on Friday and said that the hashtag was “restricted by mistake.”
Instagram added that the posts had “been limited because the community has reported some content that may not meet Instagram’s community guidelines.”
Middle East cybersecurity expert Amir Rashidi said that it was likely that Iran had orchestrated the block by mass reporting the posts.
“It is likely that users close to Iran have reported the hashtag and machines that lack enough knowledge of local politics decided to ban them,” Rashidi, director of digital rights and security at the Miaan Group, said. “This enables authoritarian regimes to exploit social media platforms.”
The posts were eventually restored and the block was lifted following pleas from activists and media organizations.
A Meta spokesperson said: “We became aware that these hashtags had been restricted by mistake, and worked quickly to fix it. You should now be able to use these hashtags as normal, and we’re so sorry for any inconvenience or confusion caused.”
Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 was hit by two missiles after taking off from Tehran on Jan. 8 last year.
Iran blamed the disaster on human error, saying that an air defense unit had mistaken the Boeing 737-800 for a US missile. The crash resulted in the deaths of nine crew members and all 167 passengers on board.
The Instagram incident on Tuesday is not the only time that the platform and others have limited posts and removed significant hashtags.
During the May 2020 Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Instagram and Facebook were accused of censoring Palestinian content by removing thousands of posts with the hashtags “#Al_Aqsa” and “#SaveSheikhJarrah.”
The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media 7amleh said that it had documented 500 cases of what it called “digital rights violations of Palestinians” from May 6 to May 18 last year.
These violations included content being taken down, accounts being removed and restrictions being imposed on the visibility of posts.
