Instagram apologises to supermodel Bella Hadid over removed post

The 23-year-old earlier this week posted an image of her father's passport listing his birthplace as Palestine.

'Are we not allowed to be Palestinian on Instagram? This, to me, is bullying,' Hadid wrote [AFP/Screengrab Instagram]

 8 July 2020

Instagram has apologised to Palestinian-Dutch supermodel Bella Hadid after she criticised the social media platform for removing a post she shared that showed a picture of her father's passport with his birthplace listed as Palestine.

According to Page Six, a United States-based news outlet, a spokesperson for Instagram's parent company Facebook said the photo should not have been removed.

"To protect the privacy of our community, we don't allow people to post personal information, such as passport numbers, on Instagram. In this case, the passport number was blurred out, so this content shouldn't have been removed," the spokesperson said.

"We've restored the content and apologised to Bella for the mistake."

The 23-year-old had earlier this week accused the platform of "bullying" after sharing with her 31.5 million followers the information page of real estate mogul Mohammed Hadid's American passport.

Bella shared a screenshot of the message she received from Instagram on her Instagram Story, which cited violations of community guidelines, including harassment and bullying.

"Instagram removed my story that only said 'My baba And his birthplace of Palestine' with a photograph of his American passport," she wrote on Tuesday. 

"Are we not allowed to be Palestinian on Instagram? This, to me, is bullying.

"You can't erase history by silencing people. It doesn't work like that," she wrote.

In a later post, she urged her followers to post where their parents were born. Many users have since reshared Bella's photos and praised the model for speaking out against Instagram's move.