Outrage after Meta suspends No Kings Instagram account during protests

The No Kings movement's Instagram account was temporarily shut down for several hours on Saturday during protests focused on increasing early voter turnout. The coalition leaders behind the nationwide pro-democracy movement expressed frustration over the outage, stating that Meta owes them an explanation and raising fears of censorship.

Separately, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued an advisory on October 10 asking Meta to review its content recommendation systems. According to Live Mint, the ministry requested that Meta strengthen checks on material that could incite violence or cause public disorder and ensure users are not disproportionately exposed to a limited set of narratives.

The advisory also asks Meta to provide adequate context for content depicting public events when authenticity or location may not be apparent. While the advisory does not name a specific incident, Live Mint notes it comes amid protests in Delhi led by opposition parties and the Cockroach Janta Party.

Brief written by urgent.news from The Guardian US, Live Mint — 2 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.