Case Description
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.
Comments
Permanent account bans should be treated as an exceptional measure, not a default outcome. In the case under review, the individual engaged in serious violations. However, the broader policy question is whether platforms should retain mechanisms for rehabilitation, time-based review, and proportional sanctions.
Across major platforms, there is a growing pattern of permanent bans imposed through automated systems, often without prior warning, without meaningful explanation of the triggering content, and without effective appeal. At the scale of billions of users, such minimal explanations do not constitute due process; they function as procedural denial.
This problem is compounded by the fact that users exercise limited control over what content they are exposed to or encouraged to engage with. Platform recommendation systems are explicitly designed to maximize engagement through opaque algorithms that shape visibility, interaction, and behavior. Users are then held fully responsible for outcomes produced within an environment they do not meaningfully control or understand.
In this context, permanent bans resemble lifetime sentences issued by automated systems under conditions of extreme information asymmetry. The platform controls the evidence, the models, the interpretation, and the remedy, while the user is provided only a label and an irreversible penalty.
The Oversight Board should consider whether permanent bans can ever be legitimate without:
-transparent evidence standards
-specific and intelligible explanations
-time-based reassessment
-independent review mechanisms
-and recognition of algorithmic influence on user behavior.
Without these safeguards, permanent bans risk becoming disproportionate, structurally unjust, and incompatible with principles of fair, constructive and accountable digital governance.
Dear Oversight Board,
I respectfully submit this comment regarding fairness in account enforcement. I am a long-time user of Meta platforms, and I want to highlight that permanent bans for first-time, especially for users with no malicious intent who made a first severe violation, can disproportionately affect users who have contributed positively for many years.
To ensure due process and fairness:
Human review should be conducted before permanent bans, especially for long-time users.
Proportional punishments (such as temporary suspensions, restricted access, or probationary measures) can achieve safety goals without unnecessarily erasing years of valuable personal data and memories.
Appeal pathways should allow users to recover irreplaceable content when it is clear that no malicious intent was involved.
I recognize the importance of protecting public figures and journalists from repeated abuse, threats, and harassment, and I support Meta’s enforcement in such cases. However, for first-time or accidental violations, overly severe penalties may harm users unfairly while not improving overall platform safety.
I encourage the Board to recommend policies that:
Ensure transparent and proportional enforcement decisions,
Include clear appeal and reconsideration processes,
Protect users’ data and personal memories,
Balance platform safety with fairness for long-time contributors.
Thank you for considering this perspective. I hope it contributes to policy recommendations that are both effective and just.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Loven