- Instagram’s auto-translation feature was adding “Palestinian terrorist” to some users’ account bios.
- Meta has apologized for the translation errors, saying it has since fixed the issue.
- One user’s bio had been translated to say: “Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom.”
Meta has apologized for Instagram’s auto-translation feature adding “Palestinian terrorist” to the bio of some users, despite the original descriptions containing no such wording.
The issue was raised on Monday in a TikTok by @ytkingkhan, 404media first reported.
The TikToker showed that his Instagram bio had a line that contained three elements — “Palestinian” in English, a Palestinian flag emoji, and the Arabic phrase “alhamdulillah.”
Instagram’s auto-translation software converted the entire line to “Praise be to God, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom,” along with the Palestinian flag emoji, according to the video.
However, when the English word “Palestinian” and the flag emoji were removed, the software more accurately translated the Arabic phrase to “Thank God,” per the TikTok.
In a statement to several outlets, a Meta spokesperson said the issue was fixed earlier this week.
“We fixed a problem that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations in some of our products. We sincerely apologize that this happened,” the spokesperson told The Guardian.
Some Instagram users have been accusing Meta of censoring pro-Palestine posts or “shadow banning” accounts that produced content supporting Palestine.
In a Monday statement, the company said this was caused by a bug.
“We identified a bug impacting all Stories that re-shared Reels and Feed posts, meaning they weren’t showing up properly in people’s Stories tray, leading to significantly reduced reach,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone wrote on X.
Stone wrote that the bug affected all accounts around the world, and had “nothing to do with the subject matter of the content.”
The bug has since been fixed, Stone added.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.
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