On Saturday, thousands of “No Kings” events were held around the country. It was a critical day for the anti-Trump protest group, which has attracted millions of participants since 2025. Saturday’s events focused on early voter activation ahead of the midterm elections.
Then, at around 1:30 p.m. Eastern, No Kings’ Instagram account was taken offline. It left the organization without its biggest megaphone during the height of the protests.
The account remained offline for approximately 90 minutes. Even after the account was restored, it took until after 5 p.m. before No Kings could post new content to the account. Common Cause called Meta’s actions “an alarming act of corporate censorship,” accusing the company of deplatforming “grassroots voter mobilization efforts.”
Just after 6 p.m., Meta spokesperson Andy Stone released a statement, claiming the suspension was an “error”:
When accounts post, share or comment at very high frequencies it can trigger automated systems. That’s what happened with the No Kings IG account in the lead up to today’s day of action. Unfortunately, that automated action was clearly taken in error. Everything is now working as it should and we sincerely apologize.
No Kings cast doubt on this explanation. “In the 24 hours before our account was shut down, we posted only a handful of times and livestreamed to thousands,” the group said. “Meta’s ‘high-frequency’ excuse doesn’t add up.”
Meta’s action against No Kings is the latest in a series of “errors” impacting the accounts of Trump critics. On October 15, a Brazilian court ordered Meta to stop throttling the accounts of President Lula, a Trump critic who is facing Trump’s preferred candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, in a runoff election. Meta acknowledged that Lula’s accounts faced restrictions but, according to the Associated Press, blamed the issue on “unrelated global technical glitches.” In September, Instagram suspended the accounts of Albanian groups protesting Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is planning to develop a luxury resort in the country. A Meta spokesperson said the accounts were “disabled by mistake.” Meta also initially rejected ads for the film Musk, a critical documentary of Trump’s political ally, calling it “an error.”
In other cases, Meta has shut down accounts at the explicit request of the Trump administration. Last October, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Department of Justice (DOJ) contacted Meta and asked it to shut down a Facebook page called “ICE Sighting-Chicagoland.” Meta complied with the request. The Trump administration has been targeting anti-fascist and other left-wing groups through a controversial presidential memorandum, NSPM-7.
The censorship of Trump critics comes as Meta has sought to establish a close relationship with Trump and his administration. Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s second inauguration and $5 million to Trump’s White House ballroom, and paid $25 million to settle a lawsuit Trump filed over his suspension from Facebook after January 6, 2021. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appointed UFC CEO Dana White, a top Trump ally, to the Meta board and named Dina Powell McCormick, a deputy national security advisor during Trump’s first term, as Meta’s president.
Zuckerberg has visited the White House frequently and reportedly talks to Trump regularly on the phone. He has been influential in shaping the administration’s AI policy.
Popular Information contacted Meta for comment and asked a spokesperson if it had received any communications regarding No Kings from the Trump administration or allied groups.
The company did not answer that inquiry but referred us to another post on X from a Meta spokesperson which claimed that the No Kings Instagram account was suspended after “our network security systems detected the use of a Claude tool reading profiles, posts, and hashtags, the rate of which sharply increased (~4x volume) in intense bursts on October 17.” This differs from the initial explanation by the same spokesperson which claimed the suspension was due to No Kings posting, sharing, or commenting at high volumes.
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TikTok censors ads for Musk documentary
Another social network with close ties to the Trump administration, TikTok, is censoring ads promoting Musk, the critical documentary. After briefly feuding with Trump, Musk has once again emerged as a key ally. (Trump awarded Musk with the “National Medal of Science” earlier this month.) Musk has become the largest donor to groups supporting Republican candidates in the 2026 midterms by a wide margin, contributing over $300 million so far.
Musk has called Alex Gibney, the filmmaker behind Musk, an “idiot,” a “horrible human,” and a “tinfoil hat crackpot.” X has banned all ads for Musk on the social network he owns, X.
On Friday, Bleecker Street, the company distributing Musk, revealed that TikTok has permanently banned it from advertising the film. TikTok’s policies prohibit ads “referencing, promoting, or opposing” any “current executive, legislative, or judicial public officials.” Musk, however, is a private CEO and has no current public position. The policy also prohibits “[a]dvocacy for or against” any “past, current, or proposed elections.” These ads, however, promote a film, not any candidate.
The executive chairman and co-founder of Oracle, which owns 15% of TikTok and controls a board seat, is Trump-supporting billionaire Larry Ellison. Further, Ellison was a member of Tesla’s board, where Musk is the CEO, from 2018 to 2022. Oracle also provides some of the infrastructure to train Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok.
The Oligarchs aren't even bothering to pretend they don't dig censoring any speech critical of them or the Right.
Zuckerberg has a lot to answer for.