Meta’s Facebook and Instagram are drawing criticism for blurring, blocking or removing two abortion pill providers’ posts, which has become more evident in recent days and is another escalation of the company’s rightward swing as President Donald Trump returned to the White House.
Several abortion pill providers also had their accounts suspended and were similarly hidden from appearing in search and recommendation results, according to a Thursday report in The New York Times.
Pill providers told the publication that the efforts have become increasingly obvious over the last two days.
“Content from their accounts — or in some cases, their entire accounts — were no longer visible on Instagram,” the Times reported Thursday. “Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, confirmed the account suspensions and the blurring of posts. The company restored some of the accounts and posts on Thursday, after The New York Times asked about the actions.”
The Mark Zuckerberg-owned company has been under the public microscope since Zuckerberg announced the termination of its third-party fact-checking program in the U.S. and as Zuckerberg vowed to further loosen restrictions on online speech, the Times reported.
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“Meta said the moderation of abortion-focused accounts was not related to the change in speech policies,” according to the Times. “But the timing of the incidents raised questions about whether the company was really loosening speech restrictions, and was another example of its challenges in content enforcement.”
A Meta spokesperson blamed at least some of the recent actions surrounding the hidden posts from abortion pill providers “to rules that prohibit the sale of pharmaceutical drugs on its platforms without proper certification,” according to the report.
But, it added, the company also described some of the occurrences as “over-enforcement.”
Meta, which has previously suppressed posts from abortion providers, has said that it was making changes to its speech policies partly to reduce the number of posts that were erroneously taken down," the Times noted.
“We’ve been quite clear in recent weeks that we want to allow more speech and reduce enforcement mistakes,” Meta said in a statement.