Both the iOS and Android app have thousands of low reviews
NBC News reported that a social media campaign by pro-Palestinian activists has slipped the Facebook app ranking in Apple and Google app stores. Activists are seeking to protest Facebook's alleged censorship of Palestinian accounts on its platform, and direct people to leave the Facebook app a one-star review.
According to NBC News, Facebook is treating the situation as a high priority issue internally; “Users are unhappy with the way we handled the situation,” a software engineer wrote in a post on an internal Facebook message board, adding that users “started protesting by leaving one-star reviews.” Facebook continues to remove the comments, but so far, Apple has refused a request to remove the reviews. It is not clear how or if Google responded to the request.
The Facebook iOS app on the App Store as of Sunday afternoon was rated 2.3 stars out of 5, with ratings one star outperforming the others. The situation was similar on Google Play Store. The Android Facebook app got a slightly higher 2.4 rating, and the majority of the reviews were 1 star.
Apple and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday.
Facebook did not respond to a request for comment , but a spokesperson said in a statement to NBC that the company does not censor its users, but applies its policies on an equal footing "regardless of who is posting or their personal beliefs." The spokesman added that the company has a specialized team that includes Arabic and Hebrew speakers "closely monitoring the situation on the ground, and focusing on making sure the harmful content is removed, while addressing any enforcement errors as quickly as possible."
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