Meta has issued a formal apology to the No Kings Coalition — the social justice movement behind historic protests — for shuttering its Instagram account during another nationwide demonstration this weekend.
The Oct. 17 “incorrect enforcement” was caused by “abrupt, high-volume” requests that resembled bot traffic, the company claimed in a social media post following public outrage. Instagram’s automatic enforcement tools flagged a Claude tool that was reportedly accessing profiles, posts, and hashtags at a high frequency.
“This activity caused our automated protections to incorrectly take the No Kings Instagram account offline,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in the statement. “It unfortunately took additional time for us to straighten out the situation with admin access to the IG account. We want to reiterate our sincere apology for the error.”
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The No Kings Coalition said that their account was offline for around 90 minutes, coinciding with a series of voter activations and planned demonstrations ahead of the midterm election. Account administrators were unable to access the account even after the page was restored.
No Kings allies took to their own social media pages to call for action and restore the No Kings account. “The timing matters. When people are gathering, organizing, and seeking information about civic participation, cutting off a movement’s primary communication channel — even temporarily — is deeply troubling,” wrote the League of Women Voters in an Oct. 18 Instagram post.
Meta has faced multiple accusations of platform censorship over the last month, including allegations by a group of feminist organizations that the company was suppressing content about the Cornell sexual assault case. For years, reproductive health and LGBTQ accounts have alleged their pages are targeted, shadow-banned, and even removed from Meta platforms for seemingly innocuous posts or unexplained platform violations.
Several of these claims came following the company’s decision to remove significant hateful conduct protections from its platform in 2025, a move that many suggest was a capitulation to the anti-DEI efforts of the Trump administration.
