Meta apologized for suspending the Instagram account of the No Kings Coalition on October 17, while the group was running nearly 3,000 protest and early-voting events across the US. Andy Stone, Meta’s VP of communications, first blamed high rates of posting and commenting, but a day later he said a tool tied to Anthropic’s Claude had been reading profiles, hashtags and posts in rapid bursts that Meta’s systems mistook for a bot. Stone didn’t say which tool it was or who was running it. The coalition said its page stayed down for about 90 minutes and admins were locked out for longer. It also rejected Meta’s explanation, citing complaints that early-voting posts were being restricted across Meta’s apps weeks before the November 3 midterms.
