Sada Social followed the objection of a number of Meta employees (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads) to the company’s involvement in the genocidal war in the Gaza Strip, its support for the Israeli occupation, and feeding the “Lavender” system into the artificial intelligence that the Israeli army uses to kill Palestinians. in Gaza.

“Lavender” is an artificial intelligence system used by the Israeli army to bomb Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, targeting them with minimal human supervision, and with a lenient approach in making and implementing the targeting decision, and guessing who they will kill in Gaza, then bombing them when they are at home, with their families. In its entirety.

Reports followed by the Sada Social Center indicate that one of the inputs of the “Lavender” system relies on data collected from WhatsApp groups, targeting Palestinians who may be present in the same group in which there are also Palestinian activists wanted by the occupation.

The Israeli AI-powered Lavender system identifies Palestinians targeted by the Israeli army in air strikes by tracking their WhatsApp communications, or the groups they join.

This comes after fears raised by Sada Social on more than one occasion about Meta’s violation of privacy on WhatsApp, which the company defines as an “end to end encrypted” application, meaning that they are encrypted messages, and encryption requires that the owning company itself is unable to see the data. Users and messages sent and received via the application.

Since October 7 and the start of the genocidal war, the enforcement of censorship and the violation of user privacy via WhatsApp has increased by blocking more than 670 numbers of Palestinian users, more than 78% of whom are journalists and users in the Gaza Strip, which directly affects their lives.

Sada Social calls on Meta's administration to commit to responsibility and transparency on its various platforms, and to issue transparency reports, which it has reserved since the start of the genocidal war, and calls on the Independent Supervisory Board to implement an urgent and real investigation into Meta's leaking of Palestinian data and its participation in the genocide.