c/digital-free-speech-watch

A friend in Chicago said my post about a local protest was 'dangerous misinformation'.

It was a video showing a cop pushing someone, which I saw with my own eyes. She reported it to the platform and it got removed for 'violence'. Since when is documenting something the same as promoting it? Has anyone had a post taken down just for showing what happened?

Question about a blocked news site I saw in a cafe in Prague

I was in a cafe in Prague last month trying to read a local news site about a protest, and it was totally blocked. The owner said it happens a lot with certain outlets. I mean, it's one thing to hear about it, but seeing a 'connection refused' error on a normal news page really hits different. Has anyone else run into weird blocks while traveling?

Spent $60 on a VPN to read a blocked news site and it just got my account suspended anyway.

I figured paying for a private connection would let me safely access a report on platform takedowns from a region that restricts it, but the social network still flagged and locked my profile for 'suspicious activity' based on the IP address, so has anyone found a method that actually works without getting you banned?

Appreciation post: My TikTok got flagged for 'medical misinformation' for saying I drank orange juice when I had a cold

Found the platform's own transparency report and saw they took down over 2 million videos in Q4 for that exact category. Anyone else get hit for something totally harmless like that?

Warning: I saw a whole political debate get scrubbed from a local Facebook group in Boise last month

The admin said it was 'off topic' but the posts were about a city council vote, which seems pretty on topic to me. Has anyone else seen a platform rule stretched that thin to shut down a conversation?

Trying to share a video from a protest in Berlin got my account flagged for a week

I posted a short clip from a public rally last month, just people holding signs, and it got taken down instantly for 'harmful content'. I mean, it took me like 5 days of back and forth with the platform's support, sending links to their own rules, before they finally put it back up. It wasn't even graphic, just a crowd. Has anyone else had to fight this hard just to post basic news footage?

Spent $60 on a VPN after my main account got locked for posting a work document

I uploaded a screenshot of a public city council meeting agenda to a local news group. The platform flagged it as 'sensitive personal data' and locked my account for a week. I paid for a VPN service to route my traffic and made a new account to appeal the decision, which worked after three days. Has anyone found a better way to challenge these automated takedowns without having to hide your location?

Got a 30-day ban on my main account for a joke about a local mayor. Took 3 weeks of appeals to get it lifted.

The auto-mod on a big platform flagged a comment I made about the mayor of Phoenix as 'misinformation'. I had to file 5 separate tickets and finally got a human to review it after 21 days. They admitted the bot was wrong but my content was still suppressed for another week. Has anyone else had a joke get caught in the political speech filters lately?

A friend argued that removing a post about a local protest was 'just content moderation', not censorship. Happened at a cafe in Austin last month.

My post about a local protest got flagged for 'harmful misinformation' because I mentioned a street name the platform didn't recognize.

The algorithm thought 'Elm Street' was fake, so it removed my whole account for a day. Has anyone else had a post taken down over something that silly?

My friend in Warsaw had a post about a protest removed for 'hate speech' last Tuesday.

It was just a photo of a crowd with a quote from a local poet. Has anyone seen similar takedowns in Europe lately?

Bought a $60 encrypted email service after my main account got flagged for a political newsletter

On one hand, it feels like paying a tax just to have a private conversation online. On the other, it's the only way I can reliably send updates to my group without our whole thread getting shadow-banned. Anyone else feel forced to pay for basic communication tools now?

My friend told me to just post the raw data and let it speak for itself

He said, 'They can't censor facts, Claire.' So I posted a chart on a big platform showing the exact number of posts removed from a subreddit over a month. It was a simple image with no text. The post got flagged for 'sharing private data' and my account got a warning. The data was all from public logs. Has anyone else had a plain chart or graph get taken down like that?

Am I the only one who saw a whole public library computer section with a blocked search term list posted on the wall?

It was in the main branch in Springfield, and the list had over 50 terms you couldn't look up, mostly about health and politics. Has anyone else run into something like this in a place that's supposed to be for public info?

I got a 7-day ban on a big platform for quoting a news headline verbatim

The headline was from the BBC about a protest, and my comment was just the quote with 'this is wild' added. Has anyone else had a post removed for just sharing a factual quote?

My friend in Germany told me their new law would make social media delete posts faster, and now I see it happening with art.

He said the NetzDG law would lead to over-blocking, and just last week an artist I follow had her political cartoon about a local election removed from a big platform for 'hate speech' when it clearly wasn't, which makes me wonder what other types of content are getting caught in these automated filters?

A friend told me my old forum posts from 2012 would get me banned today, and I think he's right

Back in 2018, I was reporting posts just because they made me mad

Honestly, I used to flag comments on a big forum for being 'hate speech' if they just disagreed with me on politics. The moment I knew I was wrong was when my own post about a local protest got removed for 'inciting violence' when it was just a news link. Tbh, it was the same vague rule I'd been hiding behind. Has anyone else had a platform turn their own rules against them like that?

Shoutout to the mods who nuked my entire thread over a single link to a public archive

Lost about three hours of work compiling that timeline because they claimed it violated a 'no external sources' rule that wasn't in the sidebar. Anyone know a platform that actually lets you cite primary documents without getting purged?

I tried posting about a city council vote on both Nextdoor and a self-hosted blog. The blog post is still up.

My video about a local protest got flagged for 'harmful content' and it took 17 days to get it back up

I posted a simple 3 minute video from a housing rights march in my city, just showing people with signs. No violence, just chanting. The platform took it down the next day, saying it broke their rules on dangerous groups. I filed an appeal right away. I got the same automated reply three times over two weeks saying it was under review. I finally got a real person to look at it after I emailed their press contact. The whole thing took 17 days to resolve. Has anyone else had a newsy video wrongly removed and found a better way to get it reviewed fast?

Watched a whole livestream get pulled for showing a protest sign

It was a city council feed from Portland last week, and the stream cut out the second someone held up a sign about police funding. Came back a minute later with that section edited out. Makes you wonder who's running the mute button on public meetings. Has a local channel done this where you are?

I finally got a shadowban lifted after two weeks of back and forth

Last month, my account on a major video site got hit with a shadowban for posting a clip from a city council meeting in Austin. The clip showed a public official making a statement, and the platform flagged it as 'harmful misinformation' with no specific reason. I filed an appeal, but the auto-reply just said my content violated community guidelines. I kept replying to the ticket every single day, pointing out it was a public record. After 14 days, I got a human response that simply said 'restored' with no apology. What's the longest you've had to fight a wrongful takedown?

Saw a whole protest get wiped from social media while I was in Berlin last week

I was visiting a friend in Berlin and we walked past a small climate protest near Alexanderplatz. Maybe 50 people with signs about a local pipeline project. I took a couple pictures and posted a short video to my usual social media account, nothing crazy. The next morning, my post was gone. No notice, no email, just vanished from my feed. My friend's post about the same protest was also removed, and when we searched for hashtags related to the event, we found nothing but old, unrelated content. It was like the whole thing never happened online, even though we physically saw it. This wasn't a huge global story, just a local gathering, but the complete digital erasure felt really intentional. Has anyone else noticed platforms quietly removing content about smaller, real-world protests in specific cities?

People keep calling the 'shadowban' on my local news page a glitch, but I have the screenshots

My town's Facebook page for road closures got its reach cut by 90% after posting about a protest at city hall. The admin showed me the backend numbers. For three weeks, our posts just stopped showing up in feeds unless you searched the exact name. That's not a bug, it's a choice by the platform. Has anyone else seen a local info page get hit like this for posting event details?