Facebook’s request to have the negative ratings removed was denied by Apple.

Apple turned down a request from Facebook to remove negative evaluations from the App Store after pro-Palestinian protestors coordinated an attempt to lower ratings due to the banning of Palestinian content.

The Facebook app had a 2.3 out of five-star rating in the App Store, down from more than four stars last week. The majority of ratings are one-star, with many people stating that their rating is due to Facebook’s hashtag censoring.

“User confidence is significantly eroding as a result of recent escalations between Israel and Palestine,” one senior software engineer said on Facebook’s internal message board. “Our clients are unhappy with the way we handled the problem.” Users believe they are being screened, that their content is being disseminated in a limited fashion, and that will finally silence them. As a result, our users have started to show their dissatisfaction via 1-star reviews.”