Instagram accounts linked to reproductive rights, sexual health and LGBTQIA+ groups have been disabled or restricted, organisations affected by the measures say.
French medical NGO Médecins du Monde (MdM) says two of its field programmes were removed from the social media platform, while campaigners tracking online restrictions report a sharp rise in complaints this year.
The Jasmine account, an MdM programme aimed at fighting violence against sex workers, was disabled by Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, on 5 May.
“We were suspended without any kind of notification,” Sarah-Marie Maffesoli, a sex work advocacy officer at the organisation, told RFI.
The Jasmine account had already been briefly suspended in late March before being restored. After the account was suspended again, MdM appealed two days later. Meta rejected the appeal and permanently disabled the account on 11 May.
Meta told the NGO that the account would be permanently disabled because its content “still does not comply” with community standards. No further explanation was provided.
Moderation guesswork
“We don’t even know which content was involved, even though, of course, we are extremely careful,” Maffesoli said.
Trained as a lawyer, she also questioned how the appeal was handled. The process lasted three days and involved no exchanges with the organisation.
“Can this really be considered an appeal?” she asked.
Jasmine had just over 6,000 followers, but MdM insisted the account was far more than a communication tool. It shared information in 10 languages and included an alert system allowing sex workers to report attackers.
“We are losing an operational tool, both for prevention and for contact with sex workers,” Maffesoli warned.
Another MDM programme, Rosela, was then disabled, followed by the account of Grisélidis, a partner association in Toulouse.
The Grisélidis account was removed after an uncontroversial post announcing outreach sessions in the region and letting people know they could come to collect condoms and lubricant, Maffesoli said.
Meta’s rules state that discussions about sex workers’ rights and the regulation of sex work are allowed. But the company bans content facilitating sexual encounters or commercial sexual services, as well as pornographic or sexual content.
Recent posts published by Jasmine were not explicit. One explained the origins of names given to programmes dedicated to sex workers, in tribute to murdered sex workers. Another announced the NGO’s attendance at Afravih, an HIV/Aids conference in Lausanne.
The charity said its teams already adapt their language to avoid moderation problems. The word “sex” is blurred or partially hidden, and wording is carefully chosen.
“Every day, it creates an enormous mental burden,” Maffesoli said. “We’ve known for a long time that you can’t post a condom demonstration video. It just doesn’t get through.”
Rise in cases
The uncertainty surrounding moderation decisions has created a growing sense of powerlessness within the organisation.
Using digital tools now means risking seeing years of work “reduced to nothing overnight”, Maffesoli said. “It really feels like living with this sword of Damocles hanging over us all the time.”
MdM later publicly criticised the suspensions on its own Instagram account.
“How far will the censorship go?” it asked, in a post criticising what the organisation called “arbitrary” and “targeted” decisions.
Repro Uncensored, which documents digital censorship affecting sexual and reproductive health, LGBTQIA+ rights and queer communities, says the cases are part of a broader pattern seen across Europe and elsewhere.
“In April alone, we received more than 130 reports,” founder and executive director Martha Dimitratou told RFI.
Most cases concern Instagram, although Facebook, TikTok and other platforms have also been affected.
“We have already had more cases since January than in the whole of last year,” Dimitratou added.
Repro Uncensored documented a previous wave of restrictions in late 2025 affecting more than 50 organisations worldwide – including abortion access groups, queer accounts and reproductive health organisations.
The cases included abortion hotlines blocked in Colombia, and US accounts helping people access abortion pills being restricted.
The organisation says some affected groups reported having accounts removed without explanation, while others were reportedly flagged under categories such as “human exploitation” or “account integrity”, despite being long-established cultural institutions, publications or community organisations.
Not all restrictions involve full account removals.
Repro Uncensored says some groups instead face deleted posts, blocked features or shadowbanning, where content visibility is reduced without the account formally disappearing.
“It’s almost worse because it’s much harder to prove,” Dimitratou said.
My Voice, My Choice, a European campaign advocating safe access to abortion, said it has faced growing problems with Instagram in recent months.
“Many of our posts, especially videos, started being flagged as violating copyright or community rules, even when the posts were clearly educational, political or awareness-raising, and the sources were properly credited,” a campaign representative told RFI.
It also lost access to some features, including the ability to livestream, for more than 300 days. Followers told the campaign they could no longer comment on certain posts, could not see content in their feeds or were unable to find the account through Instagram search.
Earlier this month, several members of the team also suddenly lost access to the account.
European legal test
My Voice, My Choice says it filed a formal complaint with Meta and remains in contact with company representatives. While waiting for the situation to improve, the campaign opened backup channels, including @my_voice_my_choice_org and @nikakolac.
The organisation suspects “coordinated mass reporting by opponents of abortion rights and feminist movements”, although it says Instagram’s moderation systems remain unclear.
Dimitratou pointed to several possible factors behind the increase in reported cases, including algorithms reacting to certain words or images, coordinated reporting campaigns and regulations aimed at protecting younger users that may encourage platforms to overly moderate sexual or potentially sexual content.
April marked the 10th anniversary of the French law criminalising clients of prostitution, a period during which MdM had been especially active online on these issues.
“Maybe we were targeted by mass reporting,” Maffesoli said, while stressing that the organisation could only speculate in the absence of explanations from Meta.
Repro Uncensored, Bits of Freedom, COC Netherlands and several Dutch queer organisations announced on 20 May that they had sent Meta a formal notice citing the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which regulates online platforms, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which governs data privacy, and Dutch anti-discrimination law.
The groups say the company may be engaging in “digital discrimination”, applying its rules unevenly and excluding already marginalised communities from digital public spaces.
“Removing queer accounts without reason or warning is a violation of European law,” Minke Gommer, a lawyer at the firm Bureau Brandeis, said in a statement. “Platforms are not allowed to structurally exclude minority groups from public debate.”
Gommer said this was the first case in which the DSA had been used to challenge content moderation by a very large online platform on discrimination grounds.
The DSA, which came into force in 2024, requires platforms to provide a “clear and specific” explanation when suspending or removing accounts. Platforms must also specify which rules were invoked and whether automated systems were used.
Meta told RFI it was examining the Jasmine, Rosela, Grisélidis and My Voice, My Choice accounts and promised an update “as soon as possible”.
“All organisations and all people on our platforms are subject to the same set of rules, and any claim that our decisions are based on group membership or advocacy activity is baseless. We also give users the option to appeal decisions if they believe we have made a mistake,” a Meta spokesperson said.
Meta also told RFI it provides users with a statement of reasons under the DSA when action is taken against content or accounts for violating community standards.
But screenshots shared by MdM regarding the Jasmine account referred only to “community standards” without identifying the post concerned or the exact rule applied.
“I don’t know how much intention there is behind it,” Dimitratou said. “But what is certain is that it is not a priority. We know they have the capacity to do better.”
This article was adapted from the original version in French by Aurore Lartigue.
