The Platform Question: Power, Accountability and Global South This resonates with Latin American experiences, where content exposing corruption, police abuse or gender inequality is frequently flagged or hidden. A similar pattern of silencing was identified in Chile during the social protests of 2019 when platform community standards were applied to remove content and accounts documenting and reporting the State violence against protesters, as documented by Derechos Digitales[6] and Datos Protegidos Foundation[7]. The latter was able to identify 169 cases of algorithmic silencing including: difficulties to upload content, deletion of accounts and removal of publications in a period of only nine days. Similar reports were registered during the massive protests in Colombia in 2021[8], when Karisma Foundation called social media platforms to be sensitive in their content moderation strategies. This double standard, that punishes whistleblowing while allowing abuse, is not a technical error. It is a direct outcome of systems built without contextual understanding, human rights frameworks, or accountability. Evidence is censored, but violence remains in place. Complaints are penalized, but not the structures that provoke them. By protecting certain narratives and silencing others, algorithms uphold the status quo and obstruct the possibilities of social change. Gendered & Linguistic Exclusions This double standard, that punishes whistleblowing while allowing abuse, is not a technical error. It is a direct outcome of systems built without contextual understanding, human rights frameworks, or accountability. 78 Experiences shared by organizations, journalists, and activists reveal that platform standards are not applied uniformly. In January 2024, Instagram disabled the account of a nonbinary creator which had spent over seven years creating and disseminating content on sex education, harm reduction, and LGBTQ+ rights. The account was disabled without clear explanation, but coincided with posting about Palestine. According to Meta, the suspension was due to violations related to “drugs and weapons,” despite no such content being published for years. “It was clearly because I spoke about Palestine”, they wrote when reaching out to Derechos Digitales to seek support to restore the account, describing a progressive shadowban of their content and a steep decline in visibility since October 2023. The pattern is telling: political expression in support of certain causes is often flagged as dangerous by automated systems or hidden moderation practices. As the owner of the Instagram account explains, “social media has become a space of Digital Resistance in the Age of Algorithmic Governance The Platform Question: Power, Accountability and Global South struggle and resistance, but also of injustice and impunity”. Their testimony, echoed by others who have been censored for discussing Palestine[9], demonstrates how freedom of expression online is increasingly shaped by geopolitical interests and dominant narratives. In Latin America, this asymmetry has a significant impact on feminist activism and journalism as well. In another case closely followed by Derechos Digitales, a developer reported having her sexual and reproductive rights application removed from Google Play Store[10], showing that the impacts of algorithmic management go way beyond social media. Developed to “reclaim sovereignty of our own bodies […] and develop new meanings to the concepts of menstruation and menstrual health”, the app challenged mainstream discourses about menstruation and was deemed in violation to Google policies regarding sexual content. The same policy does not seem to apply, for instance, to the multiple deep fakes applications widely used to generate non-consensual sexualized images of women. Argentine journalist Luciana Peker puts it bluntly: “women are on the digital frontlines, and we’ve always had to put our bodies on the line”[11]. In an increasingly hostile digital environment, journalists who cover gender, reproductive rights, or feminism face not only coordinated online abuse but also algorithmic systems that amplify hate and restrict the visibility of their work. The data is alarming: 80% of women journalists who have experienced violence online, report limiting their online participation[12], and one in three have changed jobs or been fired as a result. This is not just an individual issue, it is structural where, self-censorship becomes a survival strategy[13] in an environment where exposure can lead to personal and professional harm. Luciana Peker further warns that digital platforms, in failing to implement protection protocols for women, are undermining journalism as a public service. And the concern is broader: “It’s no longer just a gender issue, it’s an attack on freedom of expression.” The International Journalists’ Network[14] notes that content moderation follows hidden rules and shifting standards. As Forced Migration Review[15] has pointed out, when marginalized communities reclaim terminology or engage in denunciatory speech, algorithms are often quicker to remove Digital Resistance in the Age of Algorithmic Governance In an increasingly hostile digital environment, journalists who cover gender, reproductive rights, or feminism face not only coordinated online abuse but also algorithmic systems that amplify hate and restrict the visibility of their work. 79