Meta has restored the Crust News account on Threads. No notification was sent, nor explanation offered. The account, removed on earlier today, as noted in an article this morning. After periodically refreshing the profile, it simply reappeared at a point today.

Platforms like Meta should not remove independent press accounts without notice, and reverse those decisions with the same silence. In fact, we are willing to say that the practice of removing our account without notice was likely a violation of our rights as EU citizens, and have already made the relevant complaints to challenge Meta on that basis.

To readers who voiced their opposition publicly and to Meta directly, thank you. The platform has said nothing about its reasoning at either end, so we cannot say why we were reinstated, but we saw your posts fighting for us, and assume that has played some part in correcting this wrong.

It has come to our attention that our account was one of many removed in the last few days, as accounts fighting for human rights and justice disappeared alongside a removal of “bots” by Meta. We are looking into this case further, and will be launching our investigation into the types of accounts that have been on the other end of Meta’s careless sweep of their website.

If you’ve been affected: We are looking to gather accounts of similar incidents, account removals, suspensions, shadow-bans, or content suppression, across Threads, Instagram, and Facebook. If this has happened to you, please write to us at metacensorship@crustnews.com.