Instagram on Tuesday blocked searches related to a number of political hashtags, including #democrats, #democrat, #jan6th, #republicans, and many other terms. Users who searched for these hashtags were instead shown a notification that “these results have been hidden” because they “may contain sensitive content.”
It’s unclear exactly how many search terms were affected, but Reddit users reported dozens of tags were no longer searchable. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone blamed an unspecified “issue” on the Threads post and said the company was working on a fix.
The timing of the incident came just days after Mark Zuckerberg took a front row seat at President Donald Trump’s inauguration, so naturally there was speculation that the “issue” was politically motivated. It spread. Mr. Zuckerberg recently moved to end Meta’s fact-checking program and roll back content moderation standards that prohibit dehumanizing language and slurs aimed at immigrants and LGBTQ people. The company also suspended its corporate diversity program internally. But Stone said the issue affected “a variety of hashtags on Instagram, not just left-wing hashtags.”
Indeed, there seemed to be inconsistencies in what was blocked. #Democrats, #Democrats, #Republicans are reported to have been affected, but #Republicans were viewable. Users reported that they were also unable to view #constitution, #johnoliver, and #queer. Meta now appears to have addressed most of the problematic hashtags, but the company has not explained what caused the “issue.”
Notably, this isn’t the first time Instagram has mysteriously blocked hashtag searches. Meta blocked hashtags related to LGBTQ content and labeled them as “sensitive content” for several months. The company said earlier this year that this was a mistake, saying: “Our policy does not consider LGBTQ+ terminology to be sensitive.” In 2020, Instagram temporarily banned users from sharing posts with the hashtag #blacklivesmatter, but the company said it was a mistake and blamed its spam detectors.
