Meta says a tool linked to Anthropic's Claude AI set off the suspension of the No Kings Coalition's Instagram account over the weekend. Meta says its systems flagged high-volume activity resembling bot traffic, and it now calls the removal a mistake. Meta has apologized, and the page was down for about 90 minutes.
Meta says a tool linked to Anthropic's Claude AI set off the suspension of the No Kings Coalition's Instagram account over the weekend, and the company now calls the removal a mistake.
Why did Meta suspend the No Kings Instagram account?
Andy Stone, Meta's vice president of communications, gave the new explanation in a social media post on Sunday. He said the account was caught by the company's systems after a pattern of high-volume posting, sharing, and commenting. Stone described the activity as resembling automated bot traffic rather than a person browsing. Meta engineers said the Claude tool read profiles, posts, and hashtags at about four times the speed of a normal person, in brief, intense bursts.
“We want to reiterate our sincere apology for the error,” Stone wrote.
He did not say which Claude tool was involved, who was running it, or what it was doing with the account. Those questions remain unanswered in Meta's statement.
The suspension hit at a busy point in the campaign calendar. The No Kings Coalition, a group opposed to President Trump, said its Instagram page was down for about 90 minutes. The page was part of a push to encourage early voting before the November 3 midterm elections, with nearly 3,000 events taking place across the United States. Those events included marches to polling stations, which were open over the weekend, and help with voter registration.
The coalition is made up of hundreds of groups, including Indivisible, Common Cause, and the ACLU. Indivisible sits on the national steering committee alongside eight other groups, and the coalition has already held three rounds of No Kings protests since June 2025.
Has Meta restored the No Kings Instagram account?
Meta said an automated review about an hour after the suspension found the account should not have been removed. The page came back online, but administrators stayed locked out for longer. The coalition said full access was restored at 17:33 ET.
Organizers criticized Meta for the suspension, saying Instagram is a key way to reach their supporters. The coalition did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Bloomberg.
The coalition plans a national organizing call focused on voter turnout, Bloomberg reported.
This article was written with the assistance of AI.
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