At least one Dutch account among dozens of LGBTQIA+ pages quietly deleted by Meta
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has quietly removed or blocked around 50 accounts that revolve around LGBTQIA+ or abortion-related topics, The Guardian discovered. At least one Dutch account, the Amsterdam-based The Queer Agenda, is affected.
According to The Guardian, Meta says the deleted accounts violated the platforms’ rules, but has not provided any hard evidence of that.
Jackie van Gemert, founder of The Queer Agenda, confirmed to NOS that their Instagram page, as well as her private account and that of one of her former colleagues, were blocked and then deleted.
Van Gemert showed NOS a screenshot showing that an automated system at Meta had flagged The Queer Agenda as an account violating its rules against promoting human trafficking for sexual purposes.
The Queer Agenda, which publishes news about queer parties and photo exhibitions, suddenly lost 11,000 followers, Van Gemert said. “You suddenly lose your job and access to your community.”
It appears that Meta specifically targets LGBTQIA+ accounts, accounts run by sex workers, or those offering information about abortion access, Repro Uncensored, an organization that tracks censorship on social media, told the broadcaster. According to the organization, the problem is that Meta uses artificial intelligence to detect violations, but the system is being manipulated because opponents of abortion or gender diversity are running campaigns to report such accounts en masse as violating the rules.
Lotje Beek of the civil rights organization Bits of Freedom told the broadcaster that the targeting of progressive accounts is “in line with what we often see with Meta.” She links this to Donald Trump’s second presidency and the conservative change of course that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced.
“Meta is allowed to set rules on its own platforms, as long as they comply with the law. For example, when it comes ot child sex abuse footage, the company must intervene. But even legally permissible things, such as nude photos, may be banned if the company deems them inappropriate on its own platforms,” Beek said. She added that there must always be a proper justification for when an account is blocked, and Meta is not doing that well now.
Beek pointed out that Meta lifted the bans on some queer and abortion accounts after their owners complained. The company then often blamed its own automatic checks for violations. But Beek also pointed out that “very often it's progressive platforms that bear the brunt of such ‘technical errors.’”
