Meta has issued a formal apology after its automated security systems mistakenly suspended the Instagram account of the No Kings Coalition during nationwide protests.
Demonstrators gathered at thousands of events across the United States on Saturday decrying President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation efforts, war in Iran and other policies in the third round of the “No Kings” rallies.
The company explained that the disruption was triggered when a tool linked to Anthropic’s Claude AI read profile posts and hashtags at roughly four times the speed of normal human browsing, creating intense bursts of activity that closely resembled automated bot or spam traffic.
The sudden algorithmic shutdown temporarily locked organizers out of the page during a critical window of rallies and early-voting initiatives across multiple states.
The Instagram account used by organizers and attendees, however, was offline for more than an hour. And Meta spokesman Andy Stone wrote in a post on X that it took longer to fix problems with organizers’ access to the accounts.
Stone said network security systems detected the use of a Claude tool reading profiles, posts, and hashtags, with the rate sharply increasing in intense bursts on October 17.
“These abrupt, high-volume, sequential requests in a short period resembled automated bot traffic rather than an ordinary human browsing our systems. This activity caused our automated protections to incorrectly take the No Kings Instagram account offline,” he said.
Although public access was restored relatively quickly following an automated review, administrators experienced extended login delays.
Organizers strongly criticized the platform for the suppression during a major mobilization effort, highlighting how vital social media channels are for communicating with supporters.
