Actor Says TikTok, Instagram Censored Him for Posts on Hamas Atrocities
October 13th, 2023
Actor Nate Buzolic told Fox News that Instagram and TikTok censored him for posting about Hamas atrocities in Israel and Gaza.
“[T]hese are groups of people who know that the battle that's being fought on the ground in Israel is also an information war,” Buzolic said Thursday. He told Fox News that Meta-owned Instagram shut down his account no fewer than three different times. He also said Chinese Communist government-tied TikTok accused him of spreading “false information,” taking down a video he shared of a child being kidnapped in Gaza. The pro-Israel actor insisted that “pro-Palestinian propaganda” cleverly manipulates tech platforms, and that this conflict also involves an “information war.”
The bloody terrorist onslaught by Hamas last weekend, which cost the lives of 1,300 Israelis so far and provoked air strikes on Gaza, also ignited a propaganda war on social media. “I actually just showed the real-time footage that has been shared around social media,” Buzolic said. “And I think what this really presents is a clear and coordinated effort of groups to shut down content and accounts like myself who have been exposing the atrocities of what Hamas has done since Saturday.”
The actor continued, “I think people need to understand that Hamas and pro-Palestinian propaganda is very, very good at manipulating social media.” The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) owns a board seat and maintains a financial stake in TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, and there are reports of Palestinians and the CCP forming a strategic alliance months ago.
“They know all the tools, all the techniques, and I think the American people need to sit back and realize that this is not grandmas in Texas who are reporting my accounts, but these are groups of people who know that the battle that's being fought on the ground in Israel is also an information war,” Buzolic added.
Unfortunately, Silicon Valley would seemingly rather be “politically correct” than address the problems honestly, Buzolic said. Jewish people are at risk, with anti-Jewish rallies around the world cheering violence, and a Hamas leader just called for global Muslim jihad rallies, he emphasized.
Meta replied to Fox by claiming its teams seek to keep their platforms “safe” from violative content and to “coordinate with third-party fact-checkers in the region to limit the spread of misinformation.” Notably, Big Tech uses “misinformation” as a justification for censorship.
Buzolic said the response did not address the platform’s alleged guilt. “This is just the classic avoiding responsibility and trying to sit in a middle seat,” he insisted. He added of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has been ongoing ever since the Arabs first refused their own state and modern Israel came into being, that “a lot of people want to avoid it because of the nuances, the fact of the matter is what we saw from Saturday gives people no choice.”
The actor framed it as a choice for or against terrorism. “They're either in the position where they're going to support and allow terrorism to exist,” he stated, “or we're going to stand behind this nation of people who have now faced one of the greatest threats.”