Silencing \& Surging: A Layered Ecology of Algorithmic Repression and Resistance in the Gaza Escalations

Paper Title

Silencing & Surging: A Layered Ecology of Algorithmic Repression and Resistance in the Gaza Escalations

Publication Info

• Topic area: Algorithmic moderation and digital resistance during conflict
• Keywords: content moderation, algorithmic repression, digital activism, Gaza conflict, resistance assemblage, contest loop, shadowbanning, social media, platform governance, HCI/CSCW

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Social media platforms' moderation mechanisms during the Gaza conflict (2023–2025) disproportionately suppressed Palestinian advocacy content, leading to rapid takedowns, shadowbanning, and account restrictions. This moderation, often opaque and error-prone, created significant emotional, procedural, and material challenges for affected communities.
• Significance: These moderation practices jeopardize public-interest records, humanitarian aid flows, and the livelihoods of creators, while also eroding trust in platform governance. Understanding the dynamics of suppression and resistance is critical for designing fairer content governance systems.
• Motivation and related work: Previous research has documented content suppression in conflict zones, focusing on visibility metrics and algorithmic biases. However, less is known about the recursive dynamics of moderation and resistance, the emotional toll on users, and the material consequences of digital repression. This paper builds on these gaps by exploring the co-production of visibility through platform enforcement and community countermeasures.

Solution

• Proposed approach: The study introduces two conceptual frameworks: the Contest Loop (a recursive dynamic of enforcement and resistance) and the Resistance Assemblage (bottom-up infrastructures for sustaining visibility under sanction).
• Novelty:
  1. Provides an event-centered, experience-led account of moderation dynamics during the Gaza conflict.
  2. Introduces the concepts of Contest Loop and Resistance Assemblage to integrate affective, mechanistic, and material dimensions of digital repression and resistance.
  3. Proposes design and policy interventions, such as collective-appeal dashboards and evidentiary safeguards, to mitigate harm while preserving safety goals.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted a patchwork ethnography using 295 first-person testimonies and 85 NGO/press documents.
  • Analyzed three interlocking layers of the Contest Loop: Invisible Scars (affective), Dueling Brigades (mechanistic), and Feed-to-Street Ripples (material).
  • Synthesized findings to theorize the Resistance Assemblage and propose actionable design and policy recommendations.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Moderation often manifests as probabilistic throttling (e.g., shadowbanning, interstitials) rather than binary deletion.
  • Emotional impacts include whiplash, anticipatory vigilance, and self-censorship.
  • Material consequences include disrupted fundraising, evidentiary fragility, and livelihood precarity.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Extends prior work by focusing on the recursive interaction between enforcement and resistance, rather than isolated moderation events.
  • Highlights the lived experiences of affected users and the socio-technical infrastructures they build to counter repression.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Data corpus included Instagram posts, screenshots, and NGO/press reports from October 2023 to August 2025.
  • Reflexive thematic analysis was used to map affective, mechanistic, and material dimensions of moderation and resistance.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Focused on Instagram and publicly visible data, under-representing closed channels and ephemeral formats.
  • Lacked platform-side logs to verify enforcement decisions.
  • Future work will expand to other platforms (e.g., TikTok, YouTube) and deepen cross-lingual analyses.

Summary

This paper examines how algorithmic moderation during the Gaza conflict (2023–2025) suppressed Palestinian advocacy content and how affected communities resisted through ad-hoc infrastructures. The authors introduce the Contest Loop to describe the recursive interaction between platform enforcement and community countermeasures and theorize the Resistance Assemblage as the socio-technical practices that sustain visibility under sanction. Findings reveal the emotional, procedural, and material costs of moderation, while proposing design and policy interventions to reduce harm. This work contributes to HCI/CSCW by reframing moderation as a co-produced process and advocating for community-centered, well-being-sensitive content governance.