Some companies that sell abortion pills online have had their accounts on Meta’s social media platform Instagram suspended and their posts on Instagram and Meta’s Facebook suppressed.
Accordingly According to the New York Times, companies like Aid Access, Just the Pill, Women Help Women and Hey Jane were part of what Meta called “overmoderation,” which included suspending accounts and redacting, removing or blocking posts.
Meta told the Times that it had restored some accounts this week. The Times reported that an abortion pill provider’s accounts had been affected since November. Providers also told the newspaper that excessive moderation affecting their accounts and posts had increased over the past two weeks.
Meta told the Times that the problem had to do with its policy on content from drug providers. When contacted by CNET for comment, Meta spokesperson Erin Logan reiterated this.
“We prohibit the sale of medicines on our platforms without appropriate certification, and our policies in this area have not changed,” she said. “These groups face a variety of issues – some due to proper enforcement, but also due to over-enforcement. But we have been very clear in recent weeks that we want to allow more expression and reduce enforcement errors – and we are committed to doing that.
Meta also said that the redacting of posts was a technical issue with content being posted from Facebook to Instagram and that the flagged posts would be restored. According to the company, some posts did not violate Facebook guidelines.
The timing of Meta’s abuse of its accounts and posts comes as the company has changed its strategy and eliminated fact-checking on Facebook in favor of community notes. It is too more precise aligned itself with the new President Donald Trump. But Meta says moderating abortion pill providers accounts has nothing to do with free speech changes on Facebook or other Meta changes.
Trump, meanwhile, has railed against social media companies, and he issued On Tuesday, he issued an executive order aimed at what he called state censorship of social platforms. The president and others on the right have accused the Biden administration of suppressing speech on such platforms. In June, however The US Supreme Court ruled on behalf of the Biden administration in a case alleging it went too far in its contacts with social media companies. As noted From NPR, Judge Amy Coney Barrett said in her opinion for the court majority that the parties suing the government had presented no evidence to support their claims that the government pressured social media companies to restrict their freedom of speech.
Aid Access, one of the affected abortion pill providers and, as the Times noted, one of the largest abortion pill providers in the U.S., has more than 53,000 followers on Instagram and over 5,000 on Facebook. In an Instagram postThe company said: “We recognize that some of our posts are still blurry or missing, and we are working hard to resolve this.”
