IT之家 On October 19, Meta Platforms said that its automated security system mistakenly blocked the Instagram account of No Kings Coalition when a series of protests across the United States reached their peak.
The tech company apologized for this incident and provided a more detailed explanation. The incident occurred during the organization’s campaign to encourage early voting for the mid-term elections on November 3.
Meta Vice President of Distribution Andy Stone posted on social media on Sunday, saying that the Instagram engineering team found that the “reading” behavior of the account triggered the security system. On Saturday, a tool of Claude under Anthropic PBC accessed the user’s profile, posts, and topic tags intensively in a short period of time, with a access rate about four times higher than normal.
Stone said, “In a short period of time, these sudden, large-scale, and continuous access requests are more similar to automated robot traffic than to normal user browsing on the platform.”
According to Meta, after about an hour of automatic review, it was determined that the account should not have been banned. The account was then restored for public viewing, but it took longer for the admin privileges to be restored.
Stone said, “We once again offer our sincere apologies for this mistake.”
“No Kings Coalition” is an anti-Trump organization. The organization said on Saturday that its Instagram profile was inaccessible for about 90 minutes. Even after the page became accessible again, the event organizers were unable to log in to their accounts. The alliance stated that full account access was restored at 5:33 p.m. New York time on Saturday.
Organizers criticized Meta for restricting accounts during demonstrations, saying Instagram is the core platform for them and their supporters to communicate.
The alliance stated that nearly 3,000 events were held in all 50 states of the United States and Washington D.C., with millions of people participating. The goal is to expand early voting options and ensure the fairness of elections.
Stone’s Sunday statement did not specify which Claude tool it was, who operated it, or what operations were carried out by that tool on this account.
IT Home noticed that this explanation corrected Meta’s initial statement regarding the incident. Stone said on Saturday that the unusually high number of posts, forwards, and comments triggered the company’s automated system, resulting in the “No Kings Coalition” account being banned. He said at that time that this action was “clearly” a mistake.
Since Trump took office, the “No Kings Coalition” has organized several anti-Trump protests. The organization said it plans to hold a national online meeting on Wednesday local time, focusing on mobilizing efforts for voting day.