وصف حالة
Account Ban for Targeting Public Figures
Today, the Board is announcing new cases for consideration. As part of this, we invite people and organizations to submit public comments by using the button below.
Case Selection
As we cannot hear every appeal, the Board prioritizes cases that have the potential to affect lots of users around the world, are of critical importance to public discourse or raise important questions about Meta’s policies.
The cases that we are announcing today are:
Account Ban for Targeting Public Figures
2026-006-IG-MR, 2026-007-IG-MR, 2026-08-IG-MR, 2026-009-IG-MR, 2026-0010-IG-MR
Meta Referrals
Submit a public comment using the button below
The Board will assess whether Meta was right to permanently disable a user account, following a referral in which the company requested guidance from the Board. This is the first time the Board has taken a case on Meta's approach to permanently disabling accounts – an urgent concern for Meta’s users. It represents a significant opportunity to provide users with greater transparency on Meta’s account enforcement policies and practices, make recommendations for improvement, and expand the types of cases the Board can review.
In 2025, Meta permanently disabled a widely followed Instagram account for repeatedly violating the company’s Community Standards. Meta referred its decision to the Board, pointing to the challenges of respecting political speech while following its account disablement rules when users engage in patterns of abuse, including against public figures and for threats against female journalists.
Meta referred five posts made in the year before they permanently disabled the Instagram account. Multiple posts included visual threats of violence and harassment against a female journalist. Other posts featured anti-gay slurs against prominent politicians and content depicting a sex act, alleging misconduct against minorities. Meta determined that the posts violated the Violence and Incitement, Bullying and Harassment, Hateful Conduct, and Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity Community Standards. The company removed each post from the platform and applied a strike to the account after each violation.
The account came to the attention of Meta staff, who reported it to the company's internal experts for review. They determined that the account demonstrated a persistent pattern of repeated violations of the company’s policies over the previous year and posed a safety risk, as some of the referred posts called for violence that could lead to death. While the account had not yet accrued enough strikes to be automatically disabled, this risk, combined with the account’s multiple violations of Meta’s policies, led to the decision to permanently disable the account.
Meta’s Account Integrity policy notes that the company may disable accounts that persistently violate its policies, and in its referral, the company explained that it also disables accounts that demonstrate a clear intent to violate its policies. Meta noted that decisions to disable accounts can also be made outside of the strike system on a case-by-case basis, considering a user’s behavior and activity.
The Board would appreciate public comments that address:
- How best to ensure due process and fairness to people whose accounts are penalized or permanently disabled.
- The effectiveness of measures used by social media platforms to protect public figures and journalists from accounts engaged in repeated abuse and threats of violence, in particular against women in the public eye.
- Challenges in identifying and considering off-platform context when assessing threats against public figures and journalists.
- Research into the efficacy of punitive measures to shape online behaviors, and the efficacy of alternative or complementary interventions.
- Good industry practices in transparency reporting on account enforcement decisions and related appeals.
In its decisions, the Board can issue policy recommendations to Meta. While recommendations are not binding, Meta must respond to them within 60 days. As such, the Board welcomes public comments proposing recommendations that are relevant to these cases.
Public Comments
If you or your organization feel you can contribute valuable perspectives that can help with reaching a decision on the cases announced today, you can submit your contributions using the button below. Please note that public comments can be provided anonymously. The public comment window is open for 14 days, closing at 23.59 Pacific Standard Time (PST) on Tuesday, 3 February.
What’s Next
Over the next few weeks, Board Members will be deliberating these cases. Once they have reached their decision, we will post it on the Decisions page.
تعليقات
Meta’s systems are designed to keep people safe, and that goal matters. But safety should not come at the expense of fairness, especially when accounts are permanently disabled based on accusations that turn out to be false. When someone loses their account without clear explanation or a meaningful chance to appeal, it can feel like being judged without being heard.
Automated enforcement plays a role at scale, but it isn’t perfect. Mistakes happen, context is missed, and false reports can lead to serious consequences. A permanent ban should never be the default response when there is uncertainty, especially without human review. Once an account is gone, years of memories, conversations, and connections are gone too — and those losses are real to the people affected.
Protecting users from repeated abuse and threats, particularly women and public figures, is critically important. But removing innocent users due to errors or malicious reporting doesn’t strengthen those protections. It weakens trust in the system and distracts from identifying the accounts that actually pose harm.
Context also matters. Online conversations don’t exist in a vacuum, and off-platform context is often complex. Without careful review, content can be misunderstood or mischaracterized, leading to enforcement that doesn’t reflect intent or reality.
Research and experience show that punishment alone doesn’t always lead to better behavior. Warnings, temporary restrictions, and clearer communication are often more effective — and far less damaging — than irreversible bans.
At minimum, users deserve transparency, clear reasoning, and a real appeal process. Meta should ensure that false accusations don’t permanently erase people’s digital lives. Fairness, accountability, and human judgment are just as important as enforcement.
Due process can be ensured by telling each user how they violated community standards with specific reasons. Suspensions should not be allowed until Meta allows users to defend themselves against false accusations Fairness can ensured by allowing all users a proper way to appeal decisions and by not allowing Meta to remove access to their services without an explanation. Many accounts with no prior strikes are suspended and/or permanently disabled without a way for users to defend themselves. It is not fair for automation to put everyone at risk of losing their livlihood.
Off-platform context is nearly impossible to be judged with automation. Everyone expresses themselves in different ways and Meta is infringing upon human rights as well as the Constitutional Freedem of the Press as well as Freedom of Speech.
The punitive measures put in place are not a solution but rather a problem, as context and intent can’t be judged by an automated system.
Alternative interventions can be allowing the Oversight Board to have more involvement in the practices of Meta and allowing more user input.
Good industry practices would be having Meta state exactly what users did to lose their accounts and to have data showing that suspended users were clearly in violation of the Community Standards as opposed to relying on an automated system that can flag innocent content more often than not.