Meta apologized for suspending the "No Kings" protest movement's Instagram account after its security systems detected intense activity linked to a tool using the artificial intelligence model Cloud, which it considered similar to the movement of automated electronic bots, before the company admitted that the account suspension was done by mistake.
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Account suspended in conjunction with protests
The incident occurred on Saturday, October 17, coinciding with protests in the United States . The account used by the movement's organizers to communicate with participants and coordinate events disappeared for more than an hour, while it took additional time for officials to regain their administrative privileges.
The incident occurred ahead of the US midterm elections, scheduled for November 3, at a time when the movement was mobilizing participants and encouraging them to vote early.
The "No Kings" protests are a series of demonstrations, mostly in the United States, and constitute the largest protest movement in the country and the most prominent opposition to the policies of US President Donald Trump. Their message is one of opposition to what they describe as the authoritarian policies of the Trump administration, asserting that he is not a king and is not above the law, and calling for resistance to his "unilateral" decisions in running the country.
He explained that network security systems detected the use of a tool linked to the cloud model, developed by Anthropic , at a rate about 4 times the usual level, through heavy and successive batches of requests over short periods.
Stone added that this pattern of requests appeared to security systems to be similar to data traffic generated by automated activity, rather than normal human browsing, which led to the account being disabled by mistake.
According to the company's explanation, a subsequent review of the mechanism, conducted about an hour later, reassessed the suspension decision and concluded that it should not have been made. Meta then restored the account before completing the resolution of the issues that prevented administrators from accessing it.
Meta did not specify what kind of Cloud tool was used, who operated it, or what the task was, nor did it provide information to prove that the protest coalition itself was responsible for the activity that triggered the protection systems.
The movement's objections and demands for more transparency
In contrast, the No Kings coalition expressed its dissatisfaction with the company's explanation, stating in a post on the Bluesky platform that it had received reports of content related to the movement and early voting being inaccessible or restricted across Meta platforms.
The coalition called for greater transparency and accountability, and for concrete guarantees to prevent the recurrence of such incidents, noting the importance of accountability in communicating with participants and coordinating events during protests.
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