Human-rights organizations have accused Meta of restricting access to civil-society accounts in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates at the request of local authorities, calling for the company to explain its legal and human-rights review.
In a joint statement published by ALQST for Human Rights, the groups said restrictions began on April 30. They identified Facebook accounts belonging to ALQST, Democratic Diwan, Saudi researcher Abdullah Alaoudh and human-rights defender Yahya Assiri as unavailable to users in Saudi Arabia. The statement also reported restrictions in the UAE, including one affecting an academic.
The coalition characterized the measures as geo-blocking: content or accounts remain online in some places but cannot be reached from specified jurisdictions. According to the statement, affected users received notifications saying Meta had acted because of a local legal requirement or a government request. The groups said Meta's public content-restriction reporting cited Saudi and Emirati cybercrime laws and referred to material about regional conflicts and security developments.
The organizations further asserted that more than 100 Facebook pages and Instagram accounts had been restricted since March 2026, based on Meta's public reports. That aggregate and the circumstances of each restriction were not independently confirmed in the supplied evidence. Meta's own detailed response to the coalition's claims was also not included.
The statement places the restrictions in a broader dispute about technology companies' responsibilities when governments demand limits on speech. Its signatories argue that Saudi Arabia and the UAE use cybercrime and counterterrorism laws against peaceful online expression. They say the regional information environment became still tighter after United States and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, 2026.
Meta tells affected users that it considers human-rights implications when evaluating such requests, according to the notifications described by the groups. The coalition questioned how that commitment was applied in these cases. It asked the company to disclose who reviewed the demand involving ALQST, what standards they used and how restricting a rights organization was reconciled with Meta's public human-rights policy.
The groups invoked the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, saying companies should assess state requests against international standards and describe how decisions are reached. They argue that Meta has a heightened responsibility in countries where independent websites and accounts are already difficult to access. ALQST said its own website has been blocked in Saudi Arabia since 2015, while the Gulf Centre for Human Rights has been blocked in both countries since that year.
The supplied statement establishes the coalition's allegations and demands, but it does not include the underlying government orders, Meta's legal analysis or comments from Saudi or Emirati authorities. Those missing records matter when assessing the precise legal basis and scope of each action.
At the center of the dispute is whether location-specific compliance with national law can be squared with a platform's global commitments to free expression and protection of human-rights defenders. The coalition says the current restrictions cannot, and wants Meta to reverse arbitrary limits and provide a transparent account of its decisions.
