In February 2023, Human Rights Watch released the report titled "All This Terror Because of a Photo": Digital Targeting and Its Offline Consequences for LGBT People in the Middle East and North Africa", revealing that private individuals and State actors across Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia are targeting LGBT people based on their online activity on social media. The report documents the used of digital platforms to entrap and extort LGBT people, subjecting them to online harassment, and outing them, leading to arbitrary detention and torture.

According to Human Rights Watch social media platforms were found to be not doing enough to protect users vulnerable to digital targeting, and called on digital platforms to invest in content moderation, particularly in Arabic, and to conduct human rights due diligence to better protect LGBT people online.

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre invited Twitter, Meta and Grindr to respond to the allegations and recommendations contained in the report. Only Meta and Grindr responded, Twitter did not respond.