Instagram Moderators Say Iran Offered Them Bribes to Remove Accounts

The BBC reports:A Persian-language content moderator for Instagram and a former content moderator have said Iranian intelligence officials offered them money to remove Instagram accounts of journalists and activists.... Both content moderators also accused some Iranian colleagues of exhibiting "pro-regime bias" when reviewing posts on the photo-sharing service. They spoke to the BBC after many Iranian Instagram users complained that posts about recent anti-government protests in their country had been deleted. Instagram's owner, Meta Platforms, and the third-party company it uses to moderate content said there was no validity to the claims.... The protests received very little coverage on Iranian state media, meaning that Iranians had to rely on Instagram and other social media sites to learn what was happening on the ground. As the unrest continued, users noticed that some videos posted on Instagram were being removed.... The former content moderator told the BBC that he "personally knew some reviewers who supported the Iranian regime and received instructions from Iran".... All three interviewees said it was likely that some videos of the protests were removed because they included people shouting: "Death to Khamenei". Meta has previously said that its guidelines around incitement of violence prohibit calls for the death of a head of state. However, in Iran the phrase "Death to..." is commonly chanted at protests to express discontent with something or someone, rather than to express an actual threat.

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