The Federal Public Ministry in Acre (MPF-AC) gave Meta five days to explain the mass takedown of profiles linked to the LGBTQIA+ community on Instagram since mid-May.
This is a new chapter in the controversy surrounding the company’s content moderation announced by CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, in January 2025. When contacted by Folha de S.Paulo, Meta said it would not comment on the case.
The charge was formalized this Tuesday (2) by Public Prosecutor Lucas Costa Almeida Dias, who is leading a civil inquiry opened in 2025 to investigate the impacts of the changes promoted by the company in its moderation policies on the LGBTQIA+ population.
In the letter sent to Meta, the attorney states that the company must clarify the reasons for the “massive suspension of more than a hundred profiles with LGBTI+ themes” and inform “which specific community guideline each of the pages listed would have violated to suffer the summary takedown”. The MPF also questions whether the blockades were the result of “automated (algorithmic) detection or coordinated mass reporting”.
In 2025, when announcing changes to Meta’s moderation process, Zuckerberg said that professional moderators were “very politically biased”, suggesting that these changes would now be implemented by algorithms and artificial intelligence.
The MPF-AC demonstration was motivated by a representation filed hours earlier by the organization Sleeping Giants Brasil, which requested the expansion of the investigation already underway to include the recent wave of evictions.
According to the entity, the blockades began on the weekend of May 16th and 17th, the period in which the International Day to Combat LGBTphobia is celebrated, and occurred again in the days leading up to the São Paulo LGBTQIAPN+ Pride Parade, scheduled for next Sunday (7).
The organization states that, following a report published by Folha de S.Paulo regarding the first wave of suspensions, more than a hundred people who manage accounts linked to LGBTQIA+ issues contacted the organization to report the removal of their profiles.
The representation cites as the first known cases: the profiles Pheeno, Universo LGBTI, Ezatamentchy, GayBlogBr and Comunidades LGBTQIA, which together have more than 1.7 million followers. According to the document, they were removed “without any prior communication or justification of violation of the platform’s terms of use.”
The text adds that, among the removed accounts, there are influencers, information pages, collectives, associations and event profiles aimed at the LGBTQIA+ public.
After the publication of the Folha de S.Paulo report, according to Sleeping Giants, Meta reestablished some of the suspended accounts reported in the text, while continuing to suspend other profiles of this type.
“We received well over a hundred complaints”, says Humberto Ribeiro, co-founder and legal director of Sleeping Giants Brasil, who signs the representation filed with the MPF-AC. “I do not believe that it is a deliberate decision by Meta to suspend profiles on the eve of the LGBTQIA+ Parade. But it is a fact that the mass suspension represents a pattern of behavior by the company that is discriminatory towards this population.”
According to Ribeiro, among the profiles affected there is a prevalence of those linked to trans people, transvestites and drag queens.
Creator of Ezatamentchy, activist Estevão Delgado says he noticed that his profile had been taken down when he was traveling, and thought it was due to access from another country. “My account has been verified for a long time. A week, two weeks passed, I spoke to half the world. Not only was things not going well, but other accounts from other pages started to drop.”
For him, the case helped to form an organized community of authors of the pages that were suspended. “We created a collective to have more strength. Now we have to try to shield the pages because the closer we get to the elections, the attacks tend to be worse.” Ezatamentchy has been around for 12 years.
Performer and transvestite Natasha Princess also had her profile suspended in mid-April. “When it happened, I received a message that I could make an appeal and that the response would take around two days. But days later I only received the message that the account was disabled, without explanation”, she says, who has maintained the profile since 2013.
“I sent more than 30 emails, I complained on Reclame Aqui. Someone from Meta called me and said they couldn’t do anything and that I could contact a lawyer. But it was very expensive, I was upset and didn’t want to pursue it anymore”, she says. “If I had posted a naked photo, I would understand. But I never did that. It’s a work account, and I lost contracts and had to return advertising money because I was without my more than 100,000 followers.”
According to Princess, several drag queens have recently lost their profiles. Especially those that also talk about politics, he says. “Now I’m not even posting anything to avoid problems. I deleted almost everything, and I’m scared to post.” For her, if the case was truly a violation of Meta’s guidelines, the profile would not have been reactivated and returned to her.
At the national level, the case takes place in the context of the publication of decree no. 12,975, on May 21st. The text updates the regulations of the Marco Civil da Internet and, among other measures, establishes processes for proper content moderation with safeguards, such as informing the cause of removal by the platform. The rules have not yet come into force.
The representation filed with the MPF maintains that Meta now allows content that associates sexual orientation and gender identity with mental disorders in certain contexts and mentions that such changes are already the subject of the civil inquiry opened in Acre because they can be considered a type of hate speech.
Source: www.noticiasaominuto.com.br
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