Overview

• Instagram has been accused of shadowbanning and censoring content related to the Israel–Hamas war, affecting users' ability to share and engage with posts supporting Palestine.
• The Markup's investigation found that Instagram demoted nongraphic images of war, deleted captions, suppressed hashtags, and limited users' ability to appeal moderation decisions.
• Users reported a lack of transparency and effectiveness in Instagram's appeals process, with some not given the option to appeal decisions categorizing their content as spam.
• Experiments conducted by The Markup revealed that Instagram's content moderation practices did not show clear evidence of shadowbanning based on an account's history of advocacy or community violations.
• Meta, Instagram's parent company, acknowledges errors in content moderation but denies any systematic suppression of specific voices.