Instagram Mysteriously Blocks Democrat Searches After Trump Takes Office
Meta is working to resolve a technical issue on Instagram where searches for "Democrat" or "Democrats" display a "results hidden" message. The timing of this problem, occurring after President Donald Trump's inauguration which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg attended, has led some users to suggest political bias. Meta has denied these claims, stating that the technical issue affects various hashtags, including some Republican-related terms. Social media expert Matt Navarra describes the situation as "embarrassing" for Instagram. "In a hyper-partisan environment, even unintentional errors like this can escalate into accusations of partisanship," he noted. "If these issues are not resolved quickly they risk fuelling conspiracy theories and damaging Meta's reputation." Currently, searching "#Democrat" or "#Democrats" shows no results, while "#Republican" displays 3.3 million posts. Manual searches for "Democrats" show a message stating "we've hidden these results" and warning about potentially sensitive content. […]