Meta Accused of Censoring Prominent LGBTQ+ Instagram Accounts in San Francisco
San Francisco queer community leaders are sounding the alarm after Meta suspended queer accounts during Dore Alley weekend.
Meta, the parent company of social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, has been accused of pulling prominent LGBTQ+ Instagram accounts last week during one of San Francisco’s biggest leather celebrations of the year.
Last week, the city celebrated Dore Alley, one of the major leather events in the city.
LGBTQ+ media nonprofit GLAAD says that Meta shut down the accounts for The Stud, one of San Francisco’s most storied queer bars, as well as the Instagram account of the Leather District, which has been designated as a city historic district by San Francisco.
Honey Mahogany, a Stud board member and executive director of San Francisco’s Office of Transgender Initiatives, spoke out about the suspensions on Instagram, calling attention to the timing of the takedowns during one of the community’s most visible weekends.
“The Stud is a labor of love,” Mahogany said in a video posted to her personal Instagram account. “We are a collectively owned venue where none of the owners have seen a profit. We keep the place open on a razor-thin margin so having our only source of marketing shut down this weekend is going to be devastating to our club and puts us at risk.”
The accounts were eventually put back up, but GLAAD says it fits a pattern of Meta shutting down certain queer accounts.
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A spokesperson tells GO that two years ago Meta suspended the San Francisco Trans March’s account the day after the march. Last year, Meta suspended the city’s decades-old lesbian BDSM nonprofit The Exiles, and never restored it.
Other recent cases include a drag performer and business owner banned in North Carolina, and a wave of suspensions hitting LGBTQ+ accounts across Australia and New Zealand, GLAAD notes.
GLAAD tells GO that since the beginning of 2025, the company has made several changes to its policies that are anti-LGBTQ+ — including explicitly stating that LGBTQ+ people are not protected from hateful rhetoric labeling them “mentally ill” and “abnormal.”
The organization’s 2026 Social Media Safety Index found these policies continue to cause ongoing harm to LGBTQ+ people across Meta’s platforms.
“Instagram users, creators, and advertisers should pay attention to these developments and send a message that censoring appropriate LGBTQ content needs to stop,” a spokesperson from GLAAD tells GO. GLAAD is continuing to monitor and shine light on Meta’s alarming actions, while advocating to the company for the full restoration of these and other accounts that were wrongly removed or suppressed.”
“When a company as rich and powerful as Meta is silencing LGBTQ voices this broadly and with no true accountability, we should all be speaking up to express our concern. Especially given Meta’s current content policies that overtly promote, encourage, and include anti-LGBTQ rhetoric,” GLAAD’s spokesperson said.
