Meta Just Made a Journalist Disappear

Meta Just Made a Journalist Disappear

Instagram deleted Gaza journalist Saleh al-Jafarawi’s account only hours after his assassination by a Gaza militant group funded by Israel. This was during the most recent “ceasefire”, something that Saleh al-Jafarawi had just posted celebratory videos about.

His verified page, 4.5 million followers, gone in an instant. No trace of it left at all, like the man, and everything he showed the world, never existed.

When internet users have tried to find archived versions of his profile on the Wayback Machine, the internet’s supposedly indestructible time capsule, those were gone too. Turns out, Meta blocks the Wayback Machine’s crawlers altogether. Meta has built its platforms to be memory-proof. Once they hit delete, your entire digital existence goes straight to the abyss.