A TikToker made a video on Monday where he showed Instagram’s bio translate tool translating the words “Palestinian” and “alhamdulillah,” which means “praise to God,” to “Praise be to God, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom.”
The TikToker, who goes by Khan Man, said it had been brought to their attention by a Palestinian user. Khan Man said he wasn’t Palestinian himself, but when he tried it out in his bio the same odd mistranslation happened.
When he tried using just “alhamdulilah” in his bio as a control, it translated normally to “thank God.”
In Khan Man’s first video, he said Instagram had fixed the first translation quickly, but even that “fix” still had the bio translating “Palestinian” to “Palestinian terrorists.”
“And I mean just dissect it,” they said. “So praise be to Allah … was the only thing that wasn’t in English, and they translate that fine. And then all this says is Palestinian … [but] they just inserted the t word in there.”
He said he’d leave the bio up so he could monitor it until it was fixed.
“Hopefully this reaches Meta and they can fix it and offer some sort of explanation, but to be honest I’m not really sure what you could even explain that with,” he finished.
In a follow-up video posted later in the day, he said that Instagram had fixed the translation “almost immediately” after he posted his video.
“I kinda saw it in real time so I wanted to show you guys just so you know that I’m not making it up,” he explained.
Now the bio “Palestinian … alhamdulilah” “Palestinian … thank God” without any other changes.
“This ‘glitch’ was up for at least three hours,” the TikToker said. “To me personally, the fact that it was up at all is just insane, and this isn’t something that I want to act like it never happened just because it’s fixed now.”
“Hopefully somehow this video reaches Meta and they can address it,” they went on. “Not sure what would justify it but hopefully they do.”
The Daily Dot couldn’t replicate the translation error on their own and has not seen any other accounts,
Meta didn’t respond to questions about whether the glitch claim from the TikToker was legitimate.
