Meta provided evidence in fewer than 100 of these cases. The imbalance sits at the center of a widening European campaign to force social media platforms to explain decisions that shape speech, commerce and political discourse for hundreds of millions of users. An appeals body designed to review platform decisions found itself operating with almost no access to the material required to conduct those reviews. The gap between formal oversight and operational cooperation has become large enough to expose how much of Europe’s digital enforcement regime still depends on voluntary compliance from the companies it regulates.
The complaints reaching the system no longer concern only deleted posts or suspended accounts. More than 500 people contacted the BBC with complaints about their Instagram and Facebook accounts being banned without being able to appeal or speak to somebody at Meta, while some described profound personal tolls, including fears of police involvement and damage to online businesses. Meta’s posture sharpened the asymmetry. The company repeatedly refused to comment on the problems users faced, though it frequently overturned bans when the BBC raised individual cases. Access to media scrutiny, rather than access to formal appeals, became the mechanism through which some users recovered their accounts.
Europe’s enforcement system depends on evidence platforms still control
That imbalance matters because the European Union has already shifted from voluntary standards toward enforceable obligations. The fines imposed in 2025 reflected a broader change in how the European Union regulates Big Tech. Brussels moved to rule-based enforcement under the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, giving regulators powers over platform design, advertising transparency and systemic online risks. For the first time, very large online platforms face binding obligations around risk assessments, data access for researchers and transparency over algorithms and ads. Appeals Centre Europe’s findings land directly inside that architecture: a regulatory system built around transparency cannot function if the underlying evidence remains inaccessible.
The confrontation extends beyond account bans into the substance of moderation itself. Appeals Centre Europe said social media companies did not provide relevant content for review in 72% of more than 10,000 reports. In the cases it could examine, the dispute body disagreed with the platforms 59% of the time. The disagreements cut across the platforms’ own published standards. Thomas Hughes said more than two-thirds of hate speech decisions reviewed by the body involved platforms failing to enforce their own policies. The examples were not abstract moderation disputes but misogynistic, racist, homophobic and transphobic posts that remained online despite existing platform rules against them.
The numbers varied by platform, but none escaped scrutiny. TikTok failed to remove 83% of potential hate speech flagged to the body, while Facebook’s figure stood at 61% and YouTube’s at 58%. Appeals Centre Europe pointed to racist comments comparing black footballers to monkeys that remained on Instagram after a Champions League match, while antisemitic videos shared by prominent figures in Poland stayed online on YouTube. It also noted that an AI-generated video about the Russia-Ukraine war remained on TikTok despite concerns it breached misinformation rules. Each unresolved case increases pressure on Brussels to prove that the Digital Services Act can produce consequences stronger than public criticism.
Moderation disputes have widened into a challenge to platform design itself
That pressure has already widened into platform design itself. In February 2026, the European Commission preliminarily found TikTok in breach of the Digital Services Act for addictive design, including infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications and its highly personalised recommender system. The Commission’s investigation found TikTok had not adequately assessed how those features could harm the physical and mental wellbeing of users, including minors and vulnerable adults. Scientific research cited by the Commission connected such systems to compulsive behaviour and reduced self-control. Moderation failures and design scrutiny have converged into a single regulatory argument: the platform itself, not just individual pieces of content, now sits under investigation.
Meta faces a parallel front. In April Brussels preliminarily found Meta in breach of the Digital Services Act for failing to prevent minors under 13 from using Instagram and Facebook. At the same time, Meta’s moderation policies moved toward permitting statements such as “Gays are not normal”, “Women are crazy” and “Immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit”. The timing collides with growing European enforcement against online abuse. The European Union increased efforts to address cyberbullying, incitement, misinformation and hate speech, while prosecutions for online offences accelerated through 2025 and 2026. Germany’s 13th nationwide “Day of Action Against Online Hate” involved raids and interrogations for 140 suspects, and a French court convicted 10 individuals for cyberbullying the First Lady. Europe’s legal system is moving beyond content deletion toward direct liability for both users and platforms.
That shift creates an uncomfortable exposure for the companies that built their growth on algorithmic amplification. TikTok reported 56,549 user reports of illegal hate speech content in the EU and said 88.7% were reviewed within 24 hours. Another transparency report said the company removed 112 million pieces of content that breached its terms of service. Yet scale itself has become evidence against the platforms. The larger the moderation operation, the harder it becomes for companies to argue that failures are isolated errors rather than systemic features of recommendation systems built to maximize engagement.
Europe is turning transparency failures into legal and financial risk
The companies expected to benefit from looser moderation standards increasingly face the opposite pressure in Europe. Meta’s move toward Community Notes arrived after independent fact-checkers tagged 31 million posts with fact-checking articles in the first half of 2024. Replacing institutional review with community-driven moderation lowers direct operating burdens on the platform, but it also weakens the evidentiary infrastructure Brussels now demands under the Digital Services Act. A system designed to reduce corporate responsibility collides with regulators demanding documented accountability, algorithmic transparency and demonstrable enforcement records.
The dispute body itself still lacks one of the powers that matters most. Its decisions are not legally binding, and Appeals Centre Europe said it does not receive consistent data on whether platforms implement its rulings. Yet Europe’s regulatory trajectory no longer depends entirely on those rulings. The continent has moved from asking platforms to moderate responsibly toward constructing a legal framework in which opaque moderation systems, addictive recommendation engines and selective cooperation with investigators increasingly carry regulatory and judicial costs of their own.
