The No Kings Coalition says Meta executives told it at an October 30 meeting that the company had no plans to change policies tied to harmful over-enforcement. The meeting followed Meta’s temporary suspension of the coalition’s Instagram account during its October 17 No Kings: Vote Early action.
No Kings reported separate public and administrator access milestones
No Kings says its account went offline at about 1:30 p.m. ET on October 17. The coalition’s update gives two different times for when the account became publicly viewable again, 3:03 p.m. in a live update and 3:30 p.m. in a later summary. It says administrators regained full access at 5:30 p.m. ET. The coalition’s account of the outage
Ars Technica reported a four-hour lockout for administrators. The coalition’s timeline distinguishes that loss of control from the earlier return of public visibility: organizers could not administer the account until 5:30 p.m.
Meta attributed the suspension to activity that resembled bot traffic
Newsweek reported that Meta spokesperson Andy Stone blamed the suspension on abrupt, high-volume, sequential requests that resembled bot traffic and triggered automated protections. The coalition told Ars Technica it had used Claude to search keywords and hashtags across social platforms.
Records requests and concerns about error prevention
On October 19, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) announced that it had requested expedited records from the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Justice, and the FBI concerning communications and records about Meta and No Kings. CREW’s announcement
Newsweek reported that the Meta Oversight Board said the suspension should have been caught by Meta’s mistake-prevention systems. Separately, Ars Technica reported on November 3 that it had found no evidence that the Trump administration requested the suspension or that Meta intentionally targeted the coalition’s account.
