Iran Press/America: The campaign, which is being shared across social media sites, including Twitter and Facebook, calls on people to give Facebook a one-star review in the Apple and Google app stores, according to nbcnews.com.
The strategy appears to be working. Last week, the average star rating for the social network was down from over 4 out of 5 to 2.3 out of 5 on Apple’s App Store and 2.4 out of 5 on the Google Play Store Saturday evening after receiving thousands of one-star reviews. Many of the reviews include comments mentioning Facebook’s alleged silencing of Palestinian voices and hashtags such as #FreePalestine or #GazaUnderAttack.
Inside Facebook, the campaign is being treated very seriously and categorized as a SEV1, which stands for “severity 1,” a descriptor used internally when there is a major issue with the website, according to screenshots of internal message boards reviewed by NBC News. A SEV1 is the second-highest priority site event after SEV0 is used when the website is down.
“User trust is dropping considerably with the recent escalations between Israel and Palestine,” said one senior software engineer in a post on Facebook’s internal message board. “Our users are upset with our handling of the situation. Users are feeling that they are being censored, getting limited distribution, and ultimately silenced. As a result, our users have started protesting by leaving 1-star reviews.”
According to leaked screenshots of internal discussions, Facebook contacted the app stores to ask if they would remove the negative reviews. Apple declined a post by a Facebook employee who said she contacted Apple’s developer relations team about the issue.
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