On Tuesday, Instagram blocked searches related to a number of political hashtags, including #democrats, #democrat, #jan6th, #republicans, and a number of other terms. Users who searched for these hashtags instead received a message that “we have hidden these results” because they “may contain sensitive content.”
It is unclear how many searches were affected, but Reddit users reported that dozens of tags were not searchable. Meta spokesman Andy Stone blamed an unspecified “issue” in a post on Threads and said the company was working to resolve it.
This timing, just days after Mark Zuckerberg took a front-row seat at President Donald Trump’s inauguration, understandably sparked speculation that the “issue” was politically motivated. Recently, Zuckerberg decided to stop fact-checking programs in Meta, cancel content moderation standards that prohibited dehumanizing language and insults against immigrants and the LGBTQ community. The company also internally shut down its corporate diversity programs. Stone, however, said the problem affected “a number of different hashtags on Instagram – not just the ones on the left.”
Indeed, there seemed to be some inconsistency in what was blocked. It was reported that #Democrat, #democrats and #republicans were blocked, but #republican was available for viewing. Users reported that #constitution, #johnoliver, and #queer were also unavailable. For now, Meta seems to have resolved the issue with most of the hashtags in question, although the company did not explain what caused the “problem.”
It should be noted that this is not the first time Instagram has blocked hashtag searches without explanation. Meta blocked hashtags related to LGBTQ content and labeled them as “sensitive content” for several months. Earlier this year, the company said it was a mistake, noting that “we do not consider LGBTQ+ terms to be sensitive under our policy.” In 2020, Instagram briefly banned users from sharing posts with the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. The company stated that it was a mistake and blamed its spam detection functions.
