Welcome to an all-new EFFector, your regular digest on everything digital rights from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
In our 830th issue: Vehicle-tracking police drones, mass surveillance in Mexico, and the findings from our investigation into abortion censorship on social media.
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Earlier this year, EFF began investigating stories of abortion-related content being taken down or suppressed on social media. Recently, we began sharing our findings. What we uncovered is an abortion censorship crisis online, one where vital health information is protected by policy but repeatedly silenced in practice.
In February, we began asking users for their stories of abortion content censorship. Since then, we've seen nearly 100 examples from a wide variety of users, including personal accounts, influencers, healthcare clinics, research organizations, and advocacy groups. Comparing the content of these posts to what the policies of these platforms (particularly those owned by Meta) allow, we found that almost none of the submissions we received violated any of the platforms’ stated policies. Most of the censored posts simply provided factual, educational information.
One Threads post, for instance, merely shared facts about the availability and storage of two FDA-approved medications. Notably, Meta itself (which owns Threads, Facebook, and Instagram) has publicly insisted that posts like these should not be censored. In a letter last year to Amnesty International, Meta's Human Rights Policy Director stated that: “Organic content (i.e., non paid content) educating users about medication abortion is allowed and does not violate our Community Standards. Additionally, providing guidance on legal access to pharmaceuticals is allowed."
Soon after the Threads post went up, however, it was taken down for supposedly violating Meta's policy against "allow[ing] people to buy, sell, or exchange drugs that require a prescription from a doctor or a pharmacist.” In the submissions we received, this was the most common reason Meta gave for removing abortion-related content.
Around a quarter of submitted stories were reports that entire accounts or pages 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.
The stakes couldn't be higher. In a post-Roe landscape where access to accurate reproductive health information is more crucial than ever, Meta's enforcement system is silencing the very voices communities need most. If Meta and other platforms want to practice what they preach about free expression, they must close the gap between their stated policies and how they are applied.
We spoke with multiple Meta representatives to share these findings. Unfortunately, we were mostly left with the same concerns, but we’re continuing to push them to do better. We hope our ongoing blog post series highlighting examples of abortion content censorship will help the public and the platforms understand the breadth of this problem, who is affected, and with what consequences. Together, we can hold social media platforms accountable, demand transparency in moderation practices, and ultimately stop the censorship of this essential, sometimes life-saving information.
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