Attorney General Dan Rayfield today pressed Meta for answers after the social media company mistakenly shut down the No Kings Coalition’s Instagram account in the middle of a nationwide day of action on October 17.
“Meta’s actions have raised a significant number of questions and red flags about the policies, procedures, and protections they have in place for legitimate political speech,” said Attorney General Rayfield. “The company owes the public a clear explanation of what went wrong and what it’s doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
According to the No Kings Coalition, its Instagram account was suspended around 10:30 a.m. PT on October 17, during the group’s nationwide day of action to support early voting. Administrators say they heard nothing from Meta for about 90 minutes while they tried to get the account back, and full access wasn’t restored for more than four hours.
Meta has said its automated monitoring system detected a surge in activity from a Claude AI tool reading profiles, posts, and hashtags. That high-volume traffic was wrongly flagged as illicit “bot” activity, triggering “automated protections” that took the account offline.
AG Rayfield and 13 other attorneys general say Meta’s explanation raises a basic concern: the company may not be able to tell the difference between legitimate political activity and bots. With the November 3 election days away, they sent a letter asking Meta to:
- Explain in detail why the No Kings account was suspended, when Meta became aware of it, and what the company did to fix it
- Say whether, and how, human reviewers were involved in suspending and restoring the account
- Disclose any other legitimate election-related accounts that were suspended or made unavailable in this election cycle
- Describe how it will distinguish legitimate political activity from bot traffic going forward
- Explain how users whose accounts are wrongly suspended can get them back, and how Meta is making that process known
The attorneys general asked Meta to respond by Thursday, October 29.
Alongside Attorney General Rayfield in sending this letter were the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Delaware, Washington, D.C., Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and Washington.
