Meta reinstates Australian Femicide Watch after campaigner accuses tech giant of censorship

Meta’s move came after Moody called on Thursday for the page to be restored, following Instagram’s claim that she had breached its community standards without specifying which content was outside its guidelines. Moody said she appealed on Sunday, when she was notified the account was closed, and did not receive a response until the publication of this story.

It has become an important resource for advocates because governments do not publish real-time data. It reported earlier this week that the number of women killed this year reached 61, after Victorian woman Baljit Kaur was allegedly stabbed to death. The reinstatement comes as the federal government takes on big tech with its Digital Duty of Care, amid a debate about free speech in Australia.

A Meta spokesperson said: “Enforcing our policies at scale means our systems sometimes make mistakes, which is why we give people the ability to appeal our decisions. We acknowledge the important work Ms Moody does to raise awareness of violence against women and children in Australia.” The spokesperson added that the guidelines were in place to protect people, particularly children, from harmful content.

Moody questioned why her advocacy was being hampered, but no one was held accountable for the rape and death threats she regularly received online. “I’ve reported ... comments and posts and messages where people have made threats to end my life, and Meta has ruled them not against community standards,” she said. “However, women talking about violence against women are being censored, and our conversations are being removed.” She had earlier asked: “Why is talking about women’s safety so offensive?”

A campaign to reinstate her account had mobilised online, with Change.org and GetUp among the groups supporting her. Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek said Moody did important work raising awareness about domestic and sexual violence. “The tech bros should be focusing on cracking down on the filth being force-fed to our kids online, not silencing advocates,” she said. Community Strong MP Zali Steggall said documenting the murder of Australian women and children was a vital public service. “What is a real breach of community standards is the violence perpetrated against women and children and the continued lack of effective government action,” she said.

Moody said her posts did not glorify violence nor sexualise people, but called out misogyny, and that she had repeatedly been subjected to campaigns to remove her content. She said a man convicted of child sex abuse had been reporting her posts as breaching copyright, and Meta had allowed those reports to stand and had removed the material. “It’s just unbelievable that a page that exists to keep women alive is removed because it’s caused offence to, I don’t know, AI or some random crew of people who’ve reported it,” she said.

The platform polices violent threats and sexualised content, but says it does not “prohibit threats when shared in awareness-raising or condemning context”. Moody has campaigned against violence against women for more than a decade, and has criticised the prime minister for dismissing her call for a royal commission into femicide, a petition that has gathered nearly 180,000 signatures.