Key facts
- Meta suspended the No Kings Instagram account and disabled access for four hours during an early voting push, then apologized.
- Meta's Andy Stone said the account used a Claude AI tool in a way that made it appear to be a bot.
- Stone said automated review detected the error within an hour, but additional hurdles kept administrators locked out.
- State and federal lawmakers and 14 attorneys general asked Meta to further explain its actions.
- No Kings said Meta told the group at an October 30 meeting it had no plans to change over-enforcement policies.
- Stone said Meta automatically removed the @MOSenateGOP Facebook account after systems mistakenly assessed it as impersonating another.
The No Kings Coalition said over the weekend that Meta declined to commit to steps preventing automated systems from suspending one of Instagram's most prominent pro-democracy accounts if activity surged around the page during the midterm elections, Ars Technica reported on November 3, 2026.
The demand followed Meta's apology for temporarily suspending the No Kings Instagram account and disabling access for four hours at the peak of an early voting push by the group. In a post on X, Meta's Andy Stone said the account had been using a Claude AI tool in a way that made it appear to be a bot. Automated review detected the error within an hour, Stone said, but additional hurdles kept administrators locked out.
State and federal lawmakers and a coalition of 14 attorneys general have asked Meta to further explain its actions. In a letter to No Kings, Meta offered to arrange a meeting with a technical expert who could better explain the mistake. No Kings rejected the response, saying it failed to address the group's concerns, and requested a meeting with Meta senior leadership instead.
Among eight questions, the coalition asked Meta to publicly disclose any communications with the Trump administration about the No Kings account or the early voting event. On October 30, Meta executives met with No Kings. According to the coalition's account of the meeting, Meta said it had no plans to change policies that lead to harmful over-enforcement, a problem the independent Oversight Board, which reviews Meta's content decisions, worries could result in suppression of No Kings and other pro-democracy content.
No Kings said in a statement that Meta acknowledged a mistake but that an apology without action does nothing to ensure the censorship will not happen again. Ars reported finding no evidence that the Trump administration asked Meta to restrict the account or that anyone at Meta intentionally targeted it for political reasons. Meta told No Kings it planned to post a public reply to the coalition's demands, but the company did not respond to Ars's request for comment, and Stone has not posted an update on X.
Stone's account did apologize for another accidental enforcement action affecting a Republican-controlled account the day before the No Kings meeting. "We automatically removed the @MOSenateGOP Facebook account because our systems mistakenly assessed the account was impersonating another one," Stone said.