Meta – the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and WhatsApp – has reportedly disabled or shadow-banned the accounts of more than 50 abortion providers, queer organizations, and reproductive healthcare organizations around the world over the past few months.

What an advocate described as “one of the biggest waves of censorship” on the company’s platforms began in October and appears to be an escalation of Meta’s Trump-era approach to abortion and LGBTQ+ related content, The Guardian reports.

Related

Mark Zuckerberg taps anti-LGBTQ+ activist to advise Meta on AI “bias”

While many of the organizations whose accounts were removed or restricted are based in the U.K. and Europe, groups serving women in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East have also been affected.

Meta’s alleged actions come nearly a year after The Guardian reported on the company’s shadow-banning (severely limiting the number of users who can see certain accounts’ content) of accounts of organizations that help Americans access abortion pills.

Insights for the LGBTQ+ community

Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

This past October, Paige Collings with Electronic Freedom Foundation told The Bay Area Reporter that censorship of LGBTQ+ content on Instagram has noticeably increased since November 2024. She described the company as engaging in “algorithmic silencing” of LGBTQ+ content on Instagram.

“Within this last year, especially since the new US presidency, we have seen a definite increase in accounts being taken down — not only in the US, but also worldwide as a ripple effect,” Martha Dimitratou, executive director of nonprofit Repro Uncensored, told The Guardian. The organization has tracked over 200 instances of accounts related to reproductive health being removed or restricted in all of 2025 compared to the 81 it tracked in 2024.

“This has been, to my knowledge, at least one of the biggest waves of censorship we are seeing,” Dimitratou said.

In a statement, Meta pushed back on accusations that it is targeting specific content on its platforms.

“Every organization and individual on our platforms is subject to the same set of rules, and any claims of enforcement based on group affiliation or advocacy are baseless,” the statement read.

“Our policies and enforcement regarding abortion medication-related content have not changed: we allow posts and ads promoting healthcare services like abortion, as well as discussion and debate around them, as long as they follow our policies.”

But as Kinga Jelinska, executive director of Netherlands-based nonprofit Women Help Women, noted, Meta rarely specifies which policies have been violated or how. Women Help Women received a message from the company in November stating that its Facebook page had been shut down because it “does not follow our Community Standards on prescription drugs.”

“They just removed it. That’s it. We don’t even know which post it was about,” Jelinska said.

Meta claimed that over half of the accounts tracked by Repro Uncensored have been reinstated. Carolina Are, a fellow at Northumbria University’s Centre for Digital Citizens, told The Guardian that the claim fits Meta’s pattern of reinstating accounts following public pressure. However, Are criticized the company’s appeals process for banned accounts, which Meta itself admitted has become frustratingly slow.

For example, a Meta employee sent a personal message to one affected organization saying bans would likely continue and advising them to start a mailing list rather than rely on the company’s platforms.

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.