Censorship of Iran Protests on Instagram; Three Human Rights Groups Call for Meta Policy Change
Three human rights groups on Thursday, June 9, called on Meta, the owner of social networks Instagram and Facebook, to reconsider its policies regarding Persian-language content for Iran.
Article 19, a free speech advocacy group based in Britain, along with Access Now, a digital rights defender organization, and the Iran Human Rights Center based in New York, met with a senior Meta official and complained about the restrictions imposed on Instagram and Facebook for informing Iranians during recent protests.
In recent weeks, numerous reports have been published about Instagram imposing restrictions on posts related to Iran protests. Among these restrictions are the deletion of some messages and videos related to protest demonstrations.
Currently, social networks Telegram, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are blocked in Iran, and only Instagram remains accessible to the general Iranian public.
The three human rights advocacy groups stated in their meeting with Meta’s head of content policy that the company should change its policies regarding potentially sensitive content and human and automated moderation.
They added that “trust and transparency” in Instagram among Persian-speaking users has been diminished, and Meta must ensure that “its content moderation methods support and protect human rights and freedom of expression.”
Iran has witnessed widespread protests in recent weeks against rising prices and mismanagement under the rule of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Human rights activists complain to Meta that some of their Instagram posts with documented coverage of public protests have been deleted, which has deprived users of access to key resources for learning about events in Iran.
France’s news agency writes that in the absence of human rights news coverage in Iranian domestic media, human rights activists expect social networks to serve as a platform for information dissemination.
Instagram had previously also temporarily blocked the hashtag “I will light a candle,” which was launched in memory of the victims of the Ukrainian plane shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
These three human rights and free speech advocacy groups told Meta that some Instagram posts containing protest slogans such as “Death to Khamenei” and slogans against other Islamic Republic leaders have been deleted.
Meta in July of last year made some exceptions regarding the publication of such slogans and recently has also allowed the publication of such slogans in relation to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
These human rights groups, calling for coordination within Meta, expressed concern that “the absence of this subtle distinction… leads to the problematic deletion of posts or newsworthy protest posts that could directly or indirectly help confirm human rights violations.”
The aforementioned groups called for “greater transparency” in automated processes, where media banks remove content automatically based on specific phrases, images, or sounds.
They say that following allegations raised in a BBC Persian report that Iranian authorities attempted to bribe Persian-speaking employees at a content moderation contractor company based in Germany, concerns have also been raised “about human monitoring processes.”
Meta at that time denied any connection with the Iranian government and said that moderators review a random sample of content to see if rules have been violated.
Source: Radio Farda
