During a day of nationwide protests against President Donald Trump and efforts to mobilize early voters, Meta appeared to suspend the main Instagram account for the No Kings Coalition.
MS NOW’s Antonia Hylton first reported the news Saturday after a spokesperson for the organzation told the outlet that the account had disappeared and administrators had lost access at the peak of the coalition’s national day of action, around 1:30 p.m. EDT.
Later that day, Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, one of the leading organizations behind the No Kings movement, said on MeidasTouch that the account had been suspended for about 90 minutes.
“In the middle of that joyful experience at the protest locally, I got word from my team that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta had suspended the Instagram account for the No Kings Coalition,” he said. “They suspended it. We didn’t have access to it. We couldn’t post to it. Nobody could go to the page. That was for about an hour-and-a-half, during the height of the mobilization while people were still getting their No Kings protests together. As I talk to you, there are people still pulling their No Kings protests together, but we can’t access the account now.”
He continued: “You can go to it publicly now, but we can’t post, and despite us trying to get back access to it while these mobilizations are going on, the No Kings Coalition has no access to the back end of that account. Look, this is strikingly reminiscent of what we saw in Brazil just this week. A court ruled against Meta for favoring the authoritarians in that country. And we might be seeing something similar from Meta in our country right now, but rest assured, we’re not going to stop organizing against this regime.”
The timing raised questions, as the event featured nearly 3,000 voter events nationwide in what the organization called the largest day of early-voting activations in history.
When asked about the incident, Meta referred media outlets, including TheWrap, to an X post from communications officer Andy Stone.
“When accounts post, share or comment at very high frequencies it can trigger automated systems,” Stone wrote. “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.”
Following the suspension and reinstatement, the No Kings Coalition issued a statement on its Instagram page explaining what happened.
“Meta suspended the official No Kings Coalition Instagram account at the peak of a major day of no kings activations for early voting — without explanation,” the post read. “Even after visibility was restored, we still had no access to the account for hours.”
The post said that, despite the page going dark, Saturday saw “nearly 3,000 voter events nationwide in the largest day of early voting activations in history.”
While the organization said it had regained access to the account, it continued to demand an explanation for what caused the outage.
“We have regained access to our accounts, but Meta still owes us an explanation,” the post continued. “Restricting communications about voting in the middle of an election is unacceptable. Meta must answer for this suspension and take immediate steps to ensure it never happens again — to any account. But especially those working to inform voters and encourage participation in our democracy.”
No Kings events are listed as nonpartisan and are designed to increase participation from all eligible voters. The grassroots movement is a coalition of hundreds of organizations formed to oppose executive overreach, democratic backsliding and policies under Trump’s second administration.
