In October 2023, Instagram’s “See translation” feature briefly rendered an Arabic phrase in some Palestinian users’ bios as “Praise be to god, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom.” Meta said it had fixed the problem and apologized. The reports documented the erroneous translation, but did not establish what caused it.
What did Instagram translate incorrectly?
On October 19, 2023, 404 Media reported that the translation appeared in a bio combining the English word “Palestinian,” a Palestinian flag emoji and the Arabic phrase alhamdulillah. Instagram’s “See translation” output added the word “terrorists” and expanded the phrase into a sentence about fighting for freedom.
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In the reported comparison, alhamdulillah on its own, without “Palestinian” or the flag emoji, translated as “Thank God.” The discrepancy showed that the displayed result was not simply the translation of that Arabic phrase by itself.
How was the error discovered and corrected?
The public example came from TikTok user ytkingkhan, who said a Palestinian friend had alerted him to the issue. The reporting describes a demonstration using his own Instagram bio; it was not a documented audit of accounts across the platform. Futurism’s October 22 account said the wording later changed to a shorter erroneous translation before the problem was fixed.
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Meta’s spokesperson told 404 Media: “We fixed a problem that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations in some of our products. We sincerely apologize that this happened.” The Guardian reported on October 20 that Meta said the issue had been fixed earlier that week. After the correction, the reported translation read “Thank God.”
Why did Instagram add “terrorists”?
The technical cause was not established in the reports. They do not explain what in Instagram’s translation process produced the extra wording, nor do they identify a specific software defect, data source or human decision responsible for it.
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Fahad Ali, secretary of Electronic Frontiers Australia, told The Guardian: “Is it stemming from the level of automation? Is it stemming from an issue with a training set? Is it stemming from the human factor in these tools? There is no clarity on that.” Those are questions about possible causes, not a diagnosis of this incident.
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The reports establish that an Instagram translation example displayed an inappropriate rendering, that Meta acknowledged a problem with Arabic translations, and that the company said it corrected the issue and apologized. They do not establish how many accounts were affected or exactly how long the problem lasted.
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The Guardian also described separate allegations and concerns about the reach or moderation of pro-Palestinian content during the Israel-Hamas war. Those claims should not be conflated with the translation incident: the erroneous bio rendering alone does not prove intentional targeting or resolve broader allegations about moderation.
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