Meta censored the No Kings Instagram account during a nationwide campaign and is now backtracking on its excuses
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On 17 October, Meta suspended the official Instagram account of the No Kings Coalition during a nationwide campaign that was aimed at encouraging Americans to vote early in the 3 November midterm elections. Almost 3,000 events were taking place across the United States.
Organisers lost access to their account at approximately 1:30pm Eastern Time, when they needed it to communicate with participants.Meta initially blamed excessive posting, sharing, and commenting.
The following day, its Vice President of Communications, Andy Stone, changed the explanation.
Meta now claims that software using Claude AI was reading Instagram profiles, posts and hashtags at 4 times the normal rate.The account became publicly visible again after approximately 90 minutes, but organisers couldn’t publish anything until Meta restored access hours later at 5:33pm.Meta censored a political organisation during a national voting campaign, blamed its own automation, then claimed its automated systems had detected another automated tool. Meta admitted the suspension was wrong, but none of its explanations account for what happened from a technical standpoint.Meta’s response is exactly what independent technical experts like me have warned about. I point this out because we can’t allow tech companies to avoid responsibility and accountability for their actions by blaming AI.Tech companies are blaming everything but themselves. Meta is a company whose technology can infer what flavour of ice cream a 7-year-old likes from something her uncle’s dog posted on Instagram in 2020, yet apparently can’t explain why its own systems censored a political organisation at one of the most critical moments in its history.This is my independent technical analysis of Meta’s actions, not an endorsement of the No Kings Coalition or its politics.
It doesn’t matter if you support or oppose this organisation, you should be deeply concerned that Zuckerberg can censor anyone, including people or organisations you support, without providing evidence or accountability.
The same filters can be used against anyone whose views conflict with Meta’s commercial or Zuckerberg’s political interests, now or in the future.On 17 October, Andy Stone wrote:“When accounts post, share or comment at very high frequencies it can trigger automated systems.”Andy Stone@andymstoneWhen accounts post, share or comment at very high frequencies it can trigger automated systems. That's what happened with the No Kings IG account in the lead up to today's day of action. Unfortunately, that automated action was clearly taken in error. Everything is now working as…10:07 PM · Oct 17, 2026 · 362K Views894 Replies · 37 Reposts · 217 LikesStone blamed unusually frequent activity by the account itself, but the organisers disputed this, saying they’d published only a handful of posts and were livestreaming the events. Given how easily Meta’s own records could prove or disprove that claim, I suspect the company needed a more convincing explanation.A day later, Stone provided a different explanation, saying the activity was primarily the account’s “reading” behaviour.Andy Stone@andymstoneWe have continued to dig into the root cause here and would like to offer an update. Our engineering team discovered that the spike that triggered the incorrect enforcement was primarily in the account’s “reading” behavior. Specifically, our network security systems detected…Andy Stone @andymstoneWhen accounts post, share or comment at very high frequencies it can trigger automated systems. That's what happened with the No Kings IG account in the lead up to today's day of action. Unfortunately, that automated action was clearly taken in error. Everything is now working as8:41 PM · Oct 18, 2026 · 353K Views361 Replies · 29 Reposts · 177 LikesPosting and reading are completely different activities, something a competent developer or data scientist could identify within minutes by examining the activity logs.
Publishing posts, sharing content and commenting involve sending information to Instagram.
Reading profiles, posts and hashtags involves requesting information from Instagram.Meta initially blamed the organisation’s publishing activity.
Its engineers then identified reading activity instead.Stone should explain what evidence supported his first and second statement.In his revised statement, Stone said Meta’s security systems had detected “the use of a Claude tool reading profiles, posts, and hashtags”.Meta explicitly named Anthropic’s AI software but didn’t identify the tool, who operated it or whether the No Kings organisers had authorised it.Is Meta suggesting that using Claude to access Instagram is prohibited?
If so, which policy was violated?
If not, why did Meta suspend the organisation’s account instead of restricting the automated requests?Stone said the rate of requests “sharply increased (~4x volume) in intense bursts”.Four times what?If an account normally receives 100 requests during a particular period, four times that means 400. If it normally receives 100,000, the increase means 400,000.My LinkedIn posts typically reach between 2,000 and 250,000 readers, while my posts on X range from 1,500 to 1.2 million. Sudden increases in activity are normal on social media.Stone’s reference to “intense bursts” sounds alarming but provides no meaningful technical information without the actual request counts, timeframe and frequency. Even a small number of automated requests can arrive in intense bursts. What Meta hasn’t established is why those requests justified suspending the organisation’s account.Reader counts and automated requests are different measurements, so the size of an audience alone cannot establish whether Meta’s security threshold was reasonable.Without the actual numbers, the measurement period and Meta’s security thresholds, the figure doesn’t tell us anything.The No Kings Coalition was coordinating almost 3,000 events.
Increased activity involving its Instagram account was entirely predictable.Meta is using a percentage without providing the numbers needed to determine if the activity justified suspending a political organisation.Stone said the requests “resembled automated bot traffic rather than an ordinary human browsing our systems”.I founded a venture-backed cybersecurity company in Silicon Valley in 2010 and built the first security chatbots in the world - they automated actions on platforms like Slack, HipChat, Messenger, and Telegram between 2015 and 2019.
I can say with confidence that automated activity isn’t inherently a security violation.
No competent cybersecurity professional or chatbot developer would automatically classify automation as malicious. That makes no technical sense. Search engines, monitoring tools, research applications and AI assistants make billions of automated requests every hour of every day.
Platforms have systems that are designed to identify excessive traffic, restrict access credentials and block requests that violate their policies.Does Meta apply the same restrictions to people using its own AI assistant, Muse, to automate interactions with Facebook and Instagram?
If not, why?Stone claimed an automated review recognised the suspension was wrong and restored the account approximately an hour later.
This is disingenuous. Meta restored public visibility, but the organisers remained locked out for hours. By saying the account had been restored, Stone concealed the fact that Meta was still preventing the organisation from publishing.
Even when explaining a mistake of this magnitude, Meta chose language that obscured what actually happened.The No Kings organisers reported that their Instagram page became publicly visible again after approximately 90 minutes, but they still couldn’t use it. People managing the account remained locked out until 5:33pm Eastern Time.Meta’s own automated review had already decided that the suspension was wrong, yet the organisers remained unable to publish posts or communicate with supporters during their nationwide campaign.Stone later said that restoring administrative access took additional time.
Why?
The only credible explanation in my view, is that restoring meaningful access required a Meta employee with the necessary authority.
That suggests someone had to approve the reversal of a suspension Meta had already admitted was wrong.
Meta should identify who controlled that decision, who authorised the restoration and why the organisers were kept locked out.Restoring an Instagram page that its organisers still can’t use doesn’t restore their ability to communicate.
Meta’s decision to censor them continued affecting the organisation after its own systems had recognised the suspension was wrong.Stone described the original enforcement action as “clearly taken in error”. There’s nothing clear about it. It’s clear to me that the opposite to what he says is more likely to be true.An automated system doesn’t independently decide which behaviour violates Instagram’s policies, especially when it comes to such prominent accounts.The No Kings Coalition is one of America’s most prominent anti-Trump movements, organising nationwide demonstrations that involve millions of people across thousands of locations.
Suspending its Instagram account during a major mobilisation campaign was a politically significant decision with predictable consequences.Given the organisation’s prominence, the timing and the public backlash, multiple Meta teams and senior managers had to be involved in decisions about the suspension and restoration.
Zuckerberg himself would have been involved, given his hands-on approach to major content moderation decisions.This wasn’t simply a software error. People made the decisions, and Meta’s automated systems executed them.