Fears of Big Tech Censorship Grow After Meta Suspends No Kings Instagram Account
Meta has also been accused of trying to sabotage Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's campaign.
Fears of big tech platforms censoring progressive political movements are on the rise after social media giant Meta temporarily shut down the Instagram account of the No Kings coalition on Saturday.
According to No Kings, Meta suspended its official account, which was being used to post videos and images of demonstrations throughout the US, at approximately 1:00 pm Eastern time on Saturday.
The account was restored roughly two hours later, but its administrators were still blocked from posting new content for hours after.
When asked about why the account was taken down, Meta told No Kings that it "made a bad call," without elaborating.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone would subsequently offer a more detailed explanation in a Saturday social media post.
"When accounts post, share or comment at very high frequencies it can trigger automated systems," Stone wrote. "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 it should and we sincerely apologize."
Leah Greenberg, co-founder of No Kings sponsor Indivisible, was not buying Meta's official explanation.
"This excuse does not match the facts," Greenberg wrote. "We will look forward to a detailed explanation of what happened here and how Meta will take steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again."
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called Meta's suspension of the account "outrageous," and vowed to "put this on the January investigation list" should Democrats retake control of Congress after the 2026 midterm elections.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) asked if Meta was "censoring free speech to appease [President] Donald Trump," and added that "we the people deserve answers."
The suspension of the No Kings account was just the latest example of alleged Big Tech censorship.
Bleecker Street, the distributor of director Alex Gibney's four-hour documentary about SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, told The Hollywood Reporter on Saturday that TikTok had permanently suspended the film's promotional account.
Messages shared with The Hollywood Reporter revealed that TikTok accused the Musk documentary account of violating its rules regarding political content, although it was not clear what those violations were.
The Hollywood Reporter noted that while "TikTok has no official affiliation with Elon Musk... it is partly owned by [Oracle founder] Larry Ellison, who gets a rough moment in the doc when a text from him offering to pay billions to the mogul to help finance his Twitter acquisition is shown."
In Brazil, the campaign of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva last week filed a legal complaint accusing Meta of shutting down accounts promoting his candidacy while using its algorithms to promote content produced by the campaign of far-right rival Flávio Bolsonaro.
As The Associated Press reported on Thursday, a judge in Brazil's top electoral court sided with Lula's campaign, ruling that Meta "cannot reduce the distribution of political content, restrict searches, or remove posts in a way that creates an imbalance between Lula and Bolsonaro."
Attorneys representing Lula's campaign said the lawsuit against Meta was necessary because content produced by the president and his supporters "faces delivery restrictions, without any justification or transparency," while "profiles acting as political operatives for the opposing side... receive a disproportionate and artificial reach, garnering more views even than global celebrities."
Meta has consistently denied that it is biased against Lula's campaign, and it accused the president in a court filing of using "minor technical issues" to spin "a political narrative" against the company.
