Mark Zuckerberg's Instagram has "sincerely" apologized for a translation error that added the word "terrorist" to the profiles of several Palestinian users.
What Happened: Meta Platforms Inc.'s META Instagram is involved in an unfortunate controversy that added an inappropriate word out of nowhere to user profiles of Palestinian users.
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A translation issue affected several Palestinian users who had mentioned "Palestinian" in English on their Instagram profile, along with the Palestinian flag emoji, and the word "alhamdulillah" in Arabic, which translates to "praise be to God".
The use of Arabic offers an option to other users to translate it into their language or English, whichever is applicable. However, in this case, instead of providing an accurate English translation, Instagram added the word "terrorist" in the profile bio.
TikTok user YtKingKhan first reported this issue. While Meta did not directly respond to the user, it acknowledged and regretted the error in a statement to The Guardian.
"We fixed a problem that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations in some of our products. We sincerely apologize that this happened," an unnamed Meta spokesperson said.
Instagram's auto-translation feature now says, "Thank God".
Why It Matters: Meta has been earlier accused of censoring posts supporting Palestine in the early days of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
This includes shadow-banning accounts to reduce their visibility – while the shadow-banned users can still post and view content on Instagram, other users cannot see the shadow-banned users' content. This also reduces the reach and visibility of impacted users.
Meta acknowledged it as a "bug" and said it has been fixed. However, the company said it affected all stories, including reshared Reels and feed posts.
"This bug affected accounts equally around the globe and had nothing to do with the subject matter of the content – and we fixed it as quickly as possible," said Andy Stone, Meta's communications head.
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