Over the last months, X and Meta announced significant shifts in their corporate policies by ending independent fact checking and reducing content moderation. Meta announced that this shift would answer an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and explicitly referred to regulatory frameworks in different parts of the world. This statement can be seen as part of a recent political trend which implicitly or explicitly questions the indivisibility and interdependence of human rights by giving freedom of political expression absolute priority over other human rights like freedom of religion or belief and by claiming approaches to balance these rights to be censorship.

The Article 18 Alliance together with the German Commissioner for Freedom of Religion or Belief, Frank Schwabe MP, on 6 March 2025 hosted a Side Event in the surroundings of the 58th Session of the Human Rights Council on Human Rights under new pressure? How the shift of tech companies’ corporate policies impacts freedom of religion or belief and other human rights. The Side Event focused on what the new policies and practices that favour this libertarian approach to free speech on social media platforms could mean to freedom of religion or belief of individuals and minorities, possibly affected online and offline. We were very honored that Prof. Ahmed Shaheed, former UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, introduced us to the topic, followed by a presentation of Prof. Cameran Ashraf of a paper which he jointly published with Prof. Andrea Pin on FoRB and AI – Manifestations and Recommendations (linked) and by the presentation of recent findings on how AI and FoRB affect marginalized groups by Prof. Mariz Tadros.