Some companies that sell abortion pills online have had their accounts suspended on Meta’s social media platform Instagram and their posts removed on Instagram as well as Meta’s Facebook.
According to According to the New York Times, Meta said companies such as Aid Access, Just the Pill, Women Help Women and Hey Jane were part of what Meta called “excessive moderation” that included suspending accounts and blurring, deleting or blocking publications.
Meta told the Times it restored some accounts this week. An abortion pill supplier said its accounts had been affected since November, the Times reported. Vendors also told the newspaper that the over-moderation impacting their accounts and posts has intensified over the past two weeks.
Meta told the Times that the problem was related to its policies regarding drug provider content. Asked by CNET, Meta spokesperson Erin Logan reiterated this.
“We prohibit the sale of pharmaceutical drugs 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 correct enforcement, as well as over-enforcement. But we have made it clear in recent weeks that we want to allow more expression and reduce enforcement errors – and we we are committed to doing this.”
Meta also said that the blurring of posts was a technical issue involving content posted from Facebook to Instagram, and that the reported posts were being restored. Some posts, the company said, did not violate Facebook policies.
The timing of Meta’s mishandling of accounts and posts comes as the company has changed its strategy and removed fact-checking on Facebook in favor of community ratings. It is also closer lined up with new President Donald Trump. But Meta says the moderation of accounts belonging to abortion pill suppliers is not related to Facebook’s speech policy changes or other Meta changes.
Meanwhile, Trump has railed against social media companies and issued an executive order Tuesday targeting what he calls government censorship of social platforms. The president and others on the right have accused the Biden administration of suppressing speech on these platforms. However, in June, the The United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Biden administration in a case alleging it misused its contacts with social media companies. As note by NPR, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said in her opinion on behalf of the court’s majority that the parties who sued the government presented no evidence to support their claims that the government pressured media companies social media so that they restrict their speech.
Aid Access, one of the affected abortion pill suppliers and, as the Times points out, one of the largest suppliers of abortion pills in the United States, has more than 53,000 followers on Instagram and more than 5,000 on Facebook . In an Instagram jobthe company said: “We know that some of our messages are still unclear or missing, and we are working hard to resolve this issue.”