For all our billionaire social media leaders’ claims to be free speech warriors, they seem to have spent the last few days cracking down on it.
As the midterm elections approach—a high-stakes race not only for both parties but for Silicon Valley, which faces the prospect of AI regulation under a Democratic House and Senate—reports are streaming in that suggest major social media and messaging platforms have become distinctly political in their enforcement.
Meta suspended No Kings’ Instagram account for several hours during the latest series of demonstrations on Saturday, meant to mobilize voters and encourage early voting in the midterms. Andy Stone, a company spokesperson, acknowledged an “incorrect enforcement” in a post Sunday, writing that the company’s systems detected “intense” activity by a Claude AI tool reading profiles and posts that the firm contended resembled automatic bot traffic, prompting an automatic trigger to shut down the account.
Although Meta re-reviewed the removal an hour later and recognized it was done in error, it took “additional time” for the company to get the account back up.
Similar issues reached beyond the United States.
On Friday, leading Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported that Meta employees acknowledged in internal messages that left-leaning Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s Instagram accounts were limited during the country’s election earlier this month. The employees’ communications also discussed the fact that Instagram recommended right-wing challenger Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro’s profile and his channel on WhatsApp, a messaging platform that Meta also owns.
Lula’s team said some of his Instagram posts appeared without a share button, had stories that prevented reactions or sharing, or played without audio.
“Any suggestion that Meta favors one side is false,” the company said in a statement, saying the employee communications the paper reported were tied to the severity of technical issues, instead of suggesting political interference. According to Reuters, Lula’s team said it would file a complaint to the Organization of American States, contending that the company manipulated social media during the election. Lula’s administration has previously opened investigations into, and taken regulatory action around, Meta’s operations in Brazil. A spokesperson for the firm linked to a Meta Newsroom post on Brazil’s elections in response to a request for comment and noted that the Bolsonaro campaign filed on Friday to join Lula’s complaint.
Nor is it just Meta.
TikTok suspended the account advertising the new documentary Musk, documentarian Alex Gibney’s in-depth investigation of Elon Musk’s business empires and influence in right-wing politics. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the documentary’s distributor, Bleecker Street, was told on Friday that a “permanent suspension” would be instated; shortly after, it said, it was unable to pay to promote its content. On Sunday, TikTok informed Bleecker Street that its account had been restored, citing an “error.” Emails reviewed by the Hollywood Reporter show many TikTok rejections and Bleecker Street appeals on paid posts on the grounds of “political content.”
TikTok, YouTube, and Meta all reportedly rejected the documentary’s trailer. Musk’s X, meanwhile, has refused to carry any advertising for the film at all.
Update, October 19: This post has been updated to include Meta’s response to a request for comment.
Mother Jones is a nonprofit American progressive magazine that focuses on news, commentary, and investigative journalism on topics including politics, environment, human rights, health, healthcare and culture. Clara Jeffery serves as editor-in-chief of the magazine. Monika Bauerlein has been the CEO since 2015.
Last updated from