They Don’t Want Us to Know the Truth: Digital Censorship in Latino Communities

Ana Karen Flores

For Latino communities, the internet is supposed to be where information finally becomes accessible.

Instead, it’s where clarity goes to die.

We’re told that everything we need to know is “out there,” just a search away. Every day, we scroll through Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook trying to make sense of what’s happening, about immigration, reproductive rights, elections, policing, our own bodies, and our futures. And yet, every day, Latino creators, educators, and organizers disappear from our feeds. Accounts vanish. Posts lose reach overnight. Educational content is flagged, buried, or deleted with no explanation.

Latino communities already face barriers to reliable information: language gaps, limited Spanish-language reporting, and platforms that don’t invest equally in fact-checking non-English content. That vacuum doesn’t stay empty for long. It gets filled with half-truths, fear-based narratives, and viral misinformation that spreads faster than corrections ever could.

According to the, Cisneros Hispanic Leadership Institute, Spanish-language content on Facebook is less often and less quickly moderated for misinformation and violence compared with English-language content, meaning Spanish-speaking Latino users may be exposed to more unfiltered misinformation online. 

Credible, culturally relevant information is harder to access and easier to suppress. At the same time, the people trying to correct misinformation are being silenced.

Organizations tracking digital censorship are seeing this escalate. Repro Uncensored, which documents online suppression affecting movements focused on gender, health, and justice, recorded 210 incidents of account removals and severe content restrictions in 2025 up from just 81 the year before. 

And Latino-led accounts are disproportionately affected.

Posts about abortion access in Spanish disappear. Immigration explainers get labeled “sensitive.” Voter-education graphics lose visibility. Entire accounts are shadow-banned or deleted with no warning, no appeal, no transparency. Meanwhile, misleading content, often sensational, fear-driven, or outright false, remains untouched because it performs well.

This is how platforms shape what Latino communities are allowed to know.

They never want us to see the full picture.

When our accounts disappear, our histories go with them. When our posts are buried, our political power weakens. When our information ecosystem is distorted, participation drops not because we don’t care, but because access has been manipulated.

And that’s the point.

Because if you can control what a community knows, you can control what it demands. If you can blur the truth, you can delay justice. And if you can silence those who educate, you don’t have to silence the movement it will suffocate on its own.

They don’t want us to know the truth.