Meta is drawing scrutiny for censoring a news article that highlighted the extent of the illegal drugs being advertised on the platform, all while continuing to run the ads.

404 Media was founded by journalists Jason Koebler, Sam Cole, Joseph Cox, and Emanuel Maiberg. The outlet did a piece exposing how many ads there are on Instagram for illegal drugs, as well as other illegal content.

According to Koebler, Instagram limited the reach of the article, but appears to have done nothing to address the issues the article raises:

Instagram limited the reach of a 404 Media investigation into ads for drugs, guns, counterfeit money, hacked credit cards, and other illegal content on the platform within hours of us posting it. Instagram said it did this because the content, which was about Instagram’s content it failed to moderate on its own platform, didn’t follow its “Recommendation Guidelines.” Later that evening, while that post was being throttled, I got an ad for “MDMA,” and Meta’s ad library is still full of illegal content that can be found within seconds.

The revelation is a disturbing one, and supports other claims and reports over the years that Meta’s moderation abilities are not all they’re cracked up to be, especially when it comes to moderating ads, as opposed to traditional content.

“You need to think about how much of an issue, historically, general content moderation has been,” Karan Lala of the Integrity Institute, made up of former integrity team workers told Koebler. “The maturity of the different integrity teams is relevant to the kind of problems platforms have had in the past.”

Meta clearly has a problem it needs to get a handle on, and silencing the journalists shedding a light on it is probably not a look that is going to help the company.