Meta response to the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, August 31, 2022

"We seek to protect human rights defenders, as defined by the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, in their work to peacefully promote and protect human rights. We recognize human rights defenders are a high-risk user group, both in our Corporate Human Rights Policy(Section 4) and in the way we design our services and apps. We strive to offer specific measures to protect their safety and well-being.

We engaged with a number of the affected activists and other human rights defenders to understand their needs, as well as the heightened human rights risks they faced. We seek to offer specific measures to protect their safety and mitigate such risks. We’ve already taken action on thousands of accounts on Instagram as part of our ongoing investigations into this issue, and we will continue to take action on accounts we learn about that break our rules.

It’s important to note we have detailed rules against harassment and inauthentic behavior, and our policies don’t allow people to misrepresent themselves or use our platform to harass others. We want everyone to feel safe on our apps–particularly activists–in Iran and around the world. You can learn more about our policies, and also about our enforcement actions, in our August 2 Quarterly Adversarial Threat Report. While this remains a highly adversarial space, we will keep evolving our defenses.

You may also want to consult our 2022 Human Rights Report for updates on changes to our bullying and harassment policy to better serve the needs of human rights defenders and journalists."