Meta is Removing Abortion Advocates' Accounts Without Warning

"When the team at Women Help Women signed into Instagram last winter, they were met with a distressing surprise: without warning, Meta had disabled their account. The abortion advocacy non-profit organization found itself suddenly cut off from its tens of thousands of followers and with limited recourse. Meta claimed Women Help Women had violated its Community Standards on "guns, drugs, and other restricted goods," but the organization told EFF it uses Instagram only to communicate about safe abortion practices."

"Unfortunately, Women Help Women's experience is not unique. Around a quarter of our Stop Censoring Abortion campaign submissions reported that their entire account or page had been disabled or taken down after sharing abortion information-primarily on Meta platforms. This troubling pattern indicates that the censorship crisis goes beyond content removal. Accounts providing crucial reproductive health information are disappearing, often without warning, cutting users off from their communities and followers entirely."

"What's worse, Meta appears to be imposing these negative account actions without clearly adhering to its own enforcement policies. Meta's own Transparency Center stipulates that an account should receive multiple Community Standards violations or warnings before it is restricted or disabled. Yet many affected users told EFF they experienced negative account actions without any warning at all, or after only one alleged violation (many of which were incorrectly flagged, as we've explained elsewhere in this series )."

Meta disabled a major abortion advocacy organization's Instagram account without prior warning, leaving the organization cut off from tens of thousands of followers and with limited recourse. Around a quarter of submissions to the Stop Censoring Abortion campaign reported entire accounts or pages taken down after sharing abortion information, primarily on Meta platforms. Meta cited violations of Community Standards yet often failed to provide the multiple warnings its Transparency Center requires. Many affected users reported account restrictions or removals after no or only a single alleged violation. Accounts were sometimes restored only after public campaigns and news coverage, demonstrating inconsistent enforcement that undermines access to reproductive health information.

Read at Electronic Frontier Foundation