Wilka's Sports Bar is New York City's first dedicated women's sports bar — a queer-owned, woman-owned establishment that opened in fall 2025 and has spent its first year building a community of nearly 12,000 Instagram followers and a packed calendar of sapphic-centered events, WNBA celebrations, and Pride Month parties.

On June 11, Meta suspended their Instagram account for "violating community standards." When the bar appealed, Meta permanently banned them. No explanation. No specific reason. Just gone — halfway through Pride Month.

Wilka's has a theory about what happened. In the weeks before the ban, the bar says it had been receiving "a lot of flak" for only playing women's sports. Someone — or many people — appear to have reported the account, and Meta responded by wiping out everything the bar had built.

This is what targeted harassment looks like in 2026. A group of people angry that a bar chose to center women's sports reported the account repeatedly until an algorithm did the rest. Meta's content moderation systems — which have struggled for years to protect LGBTQ+ accounts from coordinated removal campaigns — failed Wilka's completely.

A queer women's sports bar celebrating Pride Month is not "inappropriate content." It is exactly the kind of community space that deserves protection — not removal.

We're calling on Meta to immediately restore Wilka's Sports Bar's Instagram account, provide a transparent explanation for the ban, and fix the moderation systems that allow coordinated harassment campaigns to silence LGBTQ+ businesses.