German Daily Decries Instagram's Restrictions On Posts By Iranians

In a report titled, “Do German Instagram employees help the mullahs?”, Bild investigated the removal of critical posts by Iranian users on Instagram, alleging that German employees help the platform to practice the censorship.

Bild added that “some of the Farsi-speaking Instagram moderators are said to have a positive attitude towards the regime and interpret the Instagram community rules strictly against the Iranian opposition in order to block posts critical of the regime.”

In May, some Iranians complained that their Instagram posts were being restricted, allegedly by other Iranians working for the company’s content review subcontractor.

Some BBC sources alleged that pro-regime employees of the German branch of Telus International, a Canadian contractor which provides content moderation to Instagram, are responsible for restricting antigovernment content of Iranian users.

A few days later, three human rights groups called on Meta, the owner Instagram and Facebook, to review its Farsi-language content procedures for Iran.

Bild says Golsa Golestaneh and Maryam Namazi two Iranian activists as well as an Iran International journalist Maryam Moqaddam have told the daily their critical posts have been deleted by Instagram.

A spokeswoman for Instagram parent company Meta told Bild, “Our teams are following the situation very closely. They will remove content that violates our rules and will fix bugs with mistakenly removed content as soon as possible.”

However, Bild asks Instagram officials how one can draw attention to the crimes of the Iranian regime when depictions of police violence or demonstrators calling for the overthrow of the government are considered depictions of violence.