Social media has actually become a battleground. It's not just a tool that activists can use. It's a tool that governments, militias, other malign actors are also very much willing to use.

Hello and welcome to Tack Won't Save Us.

I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guests are Avi Asher Shapiro and Maya Jubelli.

Avi is a journalist covering technology for the Thompson Reuters Foundation, and Maya is the Middle East correspondent for the Thompson Reuters Foundation. In this week's episode, we talk about a recent investigation they did into

Facebook's enforcement of its ban on conversion therapy posts in the Arabic language.

They found that in many cases, these posts are still active. People who promote conversion

therapy are still able to post on

Facebook and didn't even know that there was a ban in place. When Avi and Maya contacted Facebook and

showed them examples of these conversion therapy posts still being active on the platform,

they did take some of those posts down. But this is a clear example of how Facebook's content

moderation policies are not living up to what it says. And as a result, take some of those posts down, but this is a clear example of how Facebook's content moderation

policies are not living up to what it says. And as a result, you know, there are people who are

on the ground, you know, LGBTQ people in the Middle East and North Africa, who are not only falling

for what these conversion therapists are selling, but can also face really real world consequences

when they are outed or when people around them are influenced by these posts, by these conversion

therapists, and then seek to act on what they've been told if they find out that, you know,

a person they know is LGBTQ. I had a great time speaking with Avi and Maya, and I think you are

really going to like this conversation.

I think it's really insightful, and it's about a really important topic.

Just a quick note before we do get into this episode that we are talking about conversion

therapy. So there are some things that Avi and Maya describe that are quite heavy about

the things that some of these people have

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