Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, suspended the NYU People’s Solidarity Coalition’s Instagram account on Tuesday — an action the group claimed to be “strategic and coordinated” to repress dissent and pro-Palestinian speech of on-campus organizations. 

On a new account, the PSC — a coalition of student, faculty and alumni groups at NYU — claimed it was suspended “after a month of heavy restrictions” by Meta and said the university “attacked” the group’s online presence, including its account on X, which is also suspended. In a post, the PSC also said that the university is “afraid” of its ability to organize students against its “support of genocide and ethnic cleansing” amid the war in Gaza.

NYU spokesperson John Beckman told WSN the university did not request a suspension of the account, which had over 10,000 followers and more than 200 posts. However, Beckman said that the university “alerted Instagram that a group using NYU’s name without permission had embraced ‘armed struggle’ in a post,” which was condemned by the university and two councils representing faculty. A PSC representative had said that the post — which the university claimed embraced armed struggle as a “valid ‘tactic’ in achieving its aims on campus” — was “intentionally misread,” and that the statement listed armed struggle as an anti-colonial tactic.

The suspension came two days after Meta disabled Columbia University’s Students for Justice in Palestine Instagram account and permanently banned the group across all Meta platforms, according to a post by New York City’s chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement. In May, the PSC said on its Telegram account that Meta had “begun a coordinated suppression campaign” which led to pro-Palestinian pages online being taken down or “becoming entirely unusable.” The PSC also posted in July that Meta had restricted its posting privileges on Instagram. 

Meta recently updated its social media policy, saying that it will now remove speech “targeting ‘Zionists’ in several areas” where the term could be used to “refer to Jews and Israelis with dehumanizing comparisons, calls for harm, or denials of existence.” 

The group also cited the university’s updated student conduct policy, which includes “code words, like ‘Zionist,’” as examples of speech that could violate NYU’s Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment policies, which the PSC has said “seeks to criminalize anti-Zionism and equate Zionism with Judaism.” Beckman said in a public statement that this is not a “weaponization” of a word, and that it is “providing guidance to our community about how our policies apply in different circumstances.” 

“Just as college students are coming back for fall semester, both our administrations and Meta are scrambling to silence us by taking away key tools for on-campus organizing,” the PSC said on its new account. “They are losing control of the narrative and have decided to crack down on our online presence in an attempt to smother us, rather than meet our demands.”

The PSC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Contact Krish Dev and Yezen Saadah at [email protected].