Instagram Accounts for Anti-President Protests Blocked; Meta Apologises

Several Instagram accounts linked to the No Kings protest movement were blocked last weekend. Meta apologised following the decision.

The Instagram accounts of organisers and participants in No Kings demonstrations across the United States were inaccessible for about an hour during protests on Saturday. The demonstrations condemned US President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation efforts, the war in Iran and other policy measures.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone apologised shortly afterwards. He also said it had taken a long time to fix the problem.

The company said its Claude system detected a surge in usage during the protests, suggesting automated bots rather than human activity were driving traffic on social media over the weekend.

“An abrupt, large volume of consecutive requests in a short period resembled automated bot traffic rather than normal human activity browsing our systems. This activity caused our automated protection systems to mistakenly disable No Kings Instagram accounts,” Stone said, according to Reuters on Tuesday (20 October 2026).

“We want to reiterate our sincere apology for this mistake,” he added.

The protesters were not satisfied with Meta’s explanation. They said not only had accounts been suspended, but the distribution of some content had also been restricted across the technology giant’s platforms.

They said an apology was not enough, calling instead for answers, accountability and concrete safeguards.

“In addition to Instagram being shut down, we received reports that No Kings content and early voting information were inaccessible, restricted or apparently suppressed across Meta platforms,” the No Kings coalition said on BlueSky.