Meta must uphold freedom of speech and to reverse the censorship of any accounts advocating and educating on human rights and censorship that also pertains to content that speaks about Congo, Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria and all other human rights content. We also call on Meta to remove the filter political content setting as this was also used and designed as a way to censor accounts and to limit reach and awareness on issues that impact our day to day lives.

In a 2021 report, Human Rights Watch documented Facebook’s censorship of the discussion of rights issues pertaining to Israel and Palestine and warned that Meta was “silencing many people arbitrarily and without explanation.”

An independent investigation conducted by Business for Social Responsibility and commissioned by Meta foundthat the company’s content moderation in 2021 “appear[s] to have had an adverse human rights impact on the rights of Palestinian users,” adversely affecting “the ability of Palestinians to share information and insights about their experiences as they occurred.”

In 2022, in response to the investigation’s recommendations as well as guidance by Meta’s Oversight Board, Meta made a commitment to make a series of changes to its policies and their enforcement in content moderation. Almost two years later, though, Meta has not carried out its commitments, and the company has failed to meet its human rights responsibilities, Human Rights Watch found. Meta’s broken promises have replicated and amplified past patterns of abuse.