instagram on Tuesday blocked searches related to a number of political hashtags, including #democrats, #democrat, #jan6th, #republicans and several other terms. Instead, users who searched for these hashtags received a notice saying “we have hidden these results” because they “may contain sensitive content.”
It's unclear exactly how many search terms were affected, but Reddit users reported that They were inscrutable. Meta spokesman Andy Stone placed blame on an unspecified “issue” in a publication on Threads and said the company was working on a fix.
The timing, just days after Mark Zuckerberg took a front-row seat at President Donald Trump's inauguration, understandably sparked speculation that the “issue” was politically motivated. Zuckerberg recently moved to end Meta fact-checking programs and roll back <a target="_blank" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1" href="https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/facebook–instagram-meta-hate-speech-content-moderation/” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank” data-ylk=”slk:content moderation standards;cpos:4;pos:1;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas” class=”link “>content moderation standards that banned dehumanizing language and insults directed at immigrants and LGBTQ people. The company also closed its corporate diversity programs internally. Stone, however, said the issue affected “several different hashtags on instagram, not just left-wing ones.”
In fact, there seemed to be some inconsistency in what was blocked. #Democrats, #Democrats, and #Republicans were supposedly affected, but #Republican was visible. Users reported that #constitution, #johnoliver, and #queer were also unviewable. Meta now appears to have addressed most of the hashtags in question, although the company has not explained what caused the “issue.”
This, notably, is not the first time instagram has inexplicably blocked hashtag searches. Meta blocked hashtags related to LGBTQ content and labeled it as “sensitive content” for months. The company said earlier this year that this was a mistake, noting that “we do not consider LGBTQ+ terms to be sensitive under our policies.” In 2020, instagram briefly blocked users from sharing posts with the #blacklivesmatter hashtag. The company said it was a mistake and blamed its spam detection features.
