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Update on Platform Censorship: What Has Happened Since Our Article on Moral Censorship

  • May 30
  • 8 min read

About a month ago, in "Moral censorship: How social media throttles art, education and kink culture", we described how platforms like Instagram systematically curtail queer, kinky and sex-positive content – and why, in Berlin, this isn't just a reach problem but a safety and education problem. A lot has happened since. In short: the situation has escalated rather than eased – but for the first time there is also tangible legal pushback.


This article is about how organizers and club culture are responding, how Repro Uncensored monitors and records this kind of censorship, how alliances are forming abroad that are trying to take joint action here, and a little AI-assisted research into whether and how something like this could (perhaps) be set in motion in Germany too...


What the original article was about (briefly)

In spring 2026, the Instagram accounts of KitKat and Insomnia were deactivated without warning; there were similar reports from many other Berlin parties, coaches and artists. Our point: when even toned-down content and pure education (consent, safer sex, STI prevention) get blocked, the supposed protective logic weakens precisely the content that makes protection possible in the first place.


What's new since May 2026

The case numbers have risen sharply. The NGO Repro Uncensored (more on this very interesting organization below), which documents such blockings, now counts around 400 registered cases for 2026 – more than twice as many as in the entire previous year. In April alone there were, according to the organization, about 130 cases, mostly Instagram accounts, with a clear concentration among queer and sex-positive profiles. For comparison: in April, the taz was still reporting "more than 40" blocked accounts since mid-March.


Organizers are drawing practical conclusions. Even though there's no completely doing without the reach-heavy market leaders, organizers are increasingly pulling back and announcing that they will handle events and ticketing primarily not through Instagram, but via other platforms such as Signal, Telegram, Pixelfed and their own websites. This matches what can be observed in Berlin too: away from dependence on a single corporate feed, toward owned, controllable channels.


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The current status of the Berlin cases. The KitKat account (around 220,000 followers) was blocked from 24 March to 1 April and is now reachable again. With Insomnia the situation was more complicated: one of the two affected accounts couldn't be appealed at all, an objection was only possible for the second one – and according to the operator, long without success. Meta provided no substantive justification in any of the cases.


The "wave of censorship"

Repro Uncensored describes a wave of seemingly coordinated account removals that has been building since late 2024 / early 2025 – by its own account intensifying in the wake of the political shifts in the USA, with a worldwide "ripple effect." In a joint investigation with the Guardian (December 2025), more than 210 incidents – deletions, shadowbans and severe restrictions – were documented, affecting more than 50 organizations worldwide. In 2026 the pace has picked up: over 130 reported cases in April alone, mostly Instagram accounts within the EU and with a clear focus on queer and sex-positive accounts, amounting to roughly 400 cases over the course of the year. The organization explicitly reads this not as the coincidence of isolated algorithmic errors, but as a structural problem of platform governance – and it is precisely this reading that lies at the heart of the legal steps.


Who is Repro Uncensored – and what does the NGO have to do with this?

Repro Uncensored is a globally active nonprofit organization, headquartered in the USA and Europe, that documents digital suppression and supports organizations affected by discriminatory content moderation. It was founded and is led by Martha Dimitratou, who comes from digital strategy work in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). The original trigger was the censorship of educational and, in particular, abortion information on large platforms; today Repro Uncensored sees itself as an alliance of creatives, researchers, tech people and activists that takes a broader stand against the displacement of body, sexuality and identity topics from the digital space.


What they actually do: the organization runs multilingual incident tracking, operates a global "Censorship Map," publishes research, helps with the restoration of blocked accounts, and works on AI-driven harms such as deepfakes. Through a "Report an Incident" function (among others in partnership with the Electronic Frontier Foundation), affected parties can report blockings. It is precisely this data collection that makes the NGO relevant to our topic: it supplies the evidence with which queer, sex-positive and educational accounts – like the Berlin clubs – can demonstrate a pattern rather than mere isolated cases. Without this documentation there would be neither the case numbers nor the basis for the legal demand discussed below.


A formal legal demand against Meta in the Netherlands

Here lies the most important development – and right away a clarification, because this often gets shortened incorrectly: this is not a court ruling and not yet even a lawsuit, but a formal legal demand ("legal demand"), i.e. a lawyer's letter of demand as a preliminary stage. Repro Uncensored explicitly describes it as an escalation step aimed at building pressure for a European class action.


Is resistance forming?

The letter was sent on 20 May 2026 by the Amsterdam law firm Bureau Brandeis – on behalf of a broad coalition. The coalition demands four things from Meta:

  • to refrain from future unlawful blockings and shadowbanning,

  • to clearly and comprehensibly justify past measures,

  • to disclose whether automated decision-making systems were involved, and

  • to set up direct, human points of contact for affected organizations.

So this is not about damages, but about cessation, transparency and an enforceable procedure.

The lead lawyer describes the matter as the first case in which the DSA is being brought to bear against discriminatory content moderation by a Very Large Online Platform.



The central arguments

The coalition accuses Meta of having deliberately removed accounts "without adequate warning" from the queer community and thereby systematically excluding it from public discourse; of having flagged accounts in part under categories like "human exploitation" or "account integrity," even though these were established cultural institutions, publications and community spaces; that the deletion of one account in several cases automatically deleted linked and personal accounts of the same people; of having provided no robust justifications, no adequate human review and no effective complaint channels, as the DSA requires – with affected parties being told in some cases that restoration was only possible via court proceedings.


Could something like this be done in Germany too? – Thinking out loud

I'm anything but a lawyer, and just because the AI thinks it can gather the information for me, I don't want to present that as established fact – but maybe someone reading this can speak to it from a professional perspective, comment, or send me a message and correct it, confirm it, or put forward other ideas. But here's what the research turned up...

The interesting question is: do we have to wait for a European class action, or would there be levers of our own in Germany? The AI's take: there are – and one of them, competition law, is remarkably well developed here.


  1. Abuse of market power (§ 19 GWB). The Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf (OLG Düsseldorf) ruled on 2 April 2025 (case no. VI-U (Kart) 5/24) that Meta may not block a registered association's Facebook page without a substantive reason and without prior hearing – this constitutes an abusive hindrance by a market-dominant entity under § 19 (1), (2) no. 1 GWB [Germany's Act against Restraints of Competition]. Important: here the court held the jurisdiction of Irish courts agreed in the terms of service to be invalid, because the competition-law dimension opens up a lawsuit in Germany.

  2. The foundation is in place. Back in 2022, the Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) certified Meta as having "paramount cross-market significance for competition" under § 19a GWB and thereby subjected it to special abuse oversight; Meta did not contest this status.

  3. The contract and terms-of-service route. In parallel, the Regional Court of Berlin (LG Berlin) obliged Meta in 2025 to reactivate an Instagram account and made clear that platforms may not act arbitrarily when blocking. This is about fair procedures – hearing and justification – as part of the user agreement.

  4. The honest damper (I've set up my AI so that it should always also be critical): the route is not automatically open. The Higher Regional Court of Nuremberg (OLG Nürnberg) rejected the competition-law route in the case of the blocking of a single, private influencer account: such a block does not concern market-related activity but falls under the contractual terms of use; competition law is "not an instrument for responding to breaches of contract" and thereby forcing a German place of jurisdiction. The difference therefore lies strongly in whether economic, market-related activity is affected (club/organizer: more likely yes) or a purely private account (more likely no).


Conclusion

First of all, don't rely on individual channels – stay networked across platforms. You probably won't find out when a channel has been shut down, but you'll be missing important information! So follow us (and your favorite events) on Telegram too, sign up for our newsletter (still in preparation, but we're already collecting contacts), and check the official websites regularly. There you'll also find info on awareness, dress code and whatever else matters.

Anyone affected by a blocking can have cases documented at Repro Uncensored – the better the data, the stronger the legal argument.


An alliance of several affected Berlin and German organizers – similar to the Dutch coalition – could bundle a comparable push on German soil, with the OLG Düsseldorf ruling as an anchor. Whether that turns into more than a law firm and a joint letter is a question of money, stamina and the willingness to expose oneself publicly. And also of whether people even come together on this in the first place, which isn't always the case.


In any case, a great example and motivation to at least think it over. If someone gets something going, definitely let us know ;)


Because one thing is clear: Berlin, Germany and Europe are not America, not Meta, and certainly not the Bible-Belt prudery that they're trying to import here.


Sources

 
 
 

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Dan Apus Monocers – Shibari Coach, Artist, and Event Organizer

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