Meta Overhauls Controversial “Dangerous Organizations” Censorship Policy – The Intercept

The social media giant Meta recently updated the rulebook it uses to censor online discussion of people and groups it deems “dangerous,” according to internal materials obtained by The Intercept. The policy had come under fire in the past for casting an overly wide net that ended up removing legitimate, nonviolent content. The goal of the change is to remove less of this material. In updating the policy, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, also made an internal admission that the policy has censored speech beyond what the company intended. Meta’s “Dangerous Organizations and Individuals,” or DOI, policy is based around a secret blacklist of thousands of people and groups, spanning everything from terrorists and drug cartels to rebel armies and musical acts. For years, the policy prohibited the more than one billion people using Facebook and Instagram from engaging in “praise, support or representation” of anyone on the list. Now, Meta will provide a greater allowance for discussion of these banned people and groups — so long as it takes place in the context of “social and political discourse,” according to the updated policy, which also replaces the blanket prohibition against “praise” of blacklisted entities with a
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