Meta disabled the primary Instagram account belonging to the No Kings Coalition on Saturday, briefly shutting down access to the page during nationwide demonstrations against President Donald Trump.
The suspension came as nearly 3,000 events were taking place across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., as part of the group’s early-voting push ahead of the November midterms.
The social media giant attributed the disruption to an automated safety filter.
“When accounts post, share or comment at very high frequencies, it can trigger automated systems,” Meta communications officer Andy Stone wrote on X. “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.”
The temporary outage occurred during the fourth series of No Kings demonstrations held across the United States since President Trump took office in early 2025. The coalition, organized by Indivisible, emerged after the president returned to the White House following a movement focused on ensuring political power remained with the people rather than Washington leadership.
Organizers reported that administrative access was cut off around 1:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, leaving leaders unable to update supporters at a critical point during the day's actions. Even after the page became public again, organizers said they remained locked out of the account’s backend for roughly four hours.
“In the middle of that joyful experience at the protest locally, I got word from my team that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta had suspended the Instagram account for the No Kings Coalition,” organizer Ezra Levin told MeidasTouch. “They suspended it. We didn’t have access to it.
“We couldn’t post to it. Nobody could go to the page. That was for about an hour-and-a-half, during the height of the mobilization while people were still getting their No Kings protests together.”
Levin added: “This is strikingly reminiscent of what we saw in Brazil just this week. A court ruled against Meta for favoring the authoritarians in that country. And we might be seeing something similar from Meta in our country right now, but rest assured, we’re not going to stop organizing against this regime.”
The White House previously responded to the demonstrations through spokeswoman Lauren Bis, who told Newsweek that the group’s focus on early voting proved “they should change their name,” adding that Americans faced a choice between Trump’s policies and ”extreme Democrats’ radical socialist, open-border policies.”
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