Meta failed to curb anti-LGBTI hate on Facebook in Hungary, Amnesty International says News
Banned pride, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Meta failed to curb anti-LGBTI hate on Facebook in Hungary, Amnesty International says

Amnesty International on Tuesday condemned Meta Platforms Inc. for failing to adequately enforce its own content moderation policies against anti-LGBTI hate speech on Facebook in Hungary, stating that the platform prioritized engagement over the safety of marginalized communities.

Daniela Schnidrig, interim policy and advocacy adviser at Amnesty International’s Big Tech Accountability Team, said:

Meta contributed to adverse human rights impacts experienced by LGBTI people in Hungary through its policy decisions, and failed to take adequate steps to prevent the resulting harm. Risks to LGBTI people in Hungary were foreseeable and well documented, yet Meta did not adequately act on them.

Amnesty found that Meta ineffectively applied its moderation policies, allowing harmful anti-LGBTI rhetoric to remain on the platform even after it was reported. The organization found that Meta had also failed to properly assess the risks that changes to its global content policies posed to Hungary’s LGBTI community, despite knowing of the hostile political environment those users already faced.

Facebook occupies a uniquely influential position in Hungary’s information environment, reaching over half the population. The organization’s research found that many LGBTI Hungarians felt unable to leave the platform despite experiencing hostility there, given its central role in social, professional and civic life. That dynamic, the group said, drove some users to self-censor or withdraw from Facebook altogether, raising concerns about whether the company protected their rights to freedom of expression and non-discrimination.

Eszter Mihály, LGBTI rights officer at Amnesty International Hungary, added that members of the community “faced severe smear campaigns and repressive laws from the Orbán government” over the past decade and “could not express themselves freely on Meta platforms, which largely added to their despair.”

Representatives of Háttér Society, a Hungarian organization that has advocated for LGBTI rights since 1995, shared examples of harmful Facebook content identified between January 2023 and December 2024, including comments calling for physical violence against LGBTI people, dehumanizing language and narratives portraying LGBTI people as threats to children, public morality or social order.

Under the European Union’s Digital Services Act, very large online platforms including Facebook must identify and mitigate systemic risks tied to platform design to ensure that their products do not cause or contribute to human rights abuses. This legislation requires such platforms to analyze widespread risks to fundamental rights, including freedom of expression, and to put measures in place once those risks are identified.

This development is the latest in a series of measures targeting the LGBTI community in the country, following three police bans on a peaceful Pride assembly. Although the organizers challenged the ban at the Supreme Court, ultimately prevailing twice, the Court ended up upholding the ban. The European Commission and the European Parliament have also criticized recent constitutional changes and the 2021 law which conflates any form of LGBT expression as being equivalent to pedophilia.

Despite Hungary defending the 2021 legislation against widespread criticism by stating that its intention is only to educate children regarding any sexual content, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that the law violated existing EU rules on non-discrimination and human dignity.

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