Meta Says It Wrongly Cut Off 'No Kings' Instagram on Protest Day

Thousands marched from Grand Park in downtown L.A. while Meta blamed an automated system for locking the coalition out, and apologized.

The "No Kings" coalition's main Instagram account went dark late Saturday morning, hours before thousands of protesters gathered in downtown Los Angeles, organizers said.

Meta says that was a mistake. "When accounts post, share or comment at very high frequencies it can trigger automated systems," company spokesman Andy Stone wrote on X, adding that the action against the account was taken in error and apologizing. The coalition, which had built the whole day around getting people to vote early, says it still wants Meta to explain.

The timing is the heart of the complaint. It was about 10:30 a.m. in L.A., 1:30 p.m. on the East Coast, when the page vanished and its administrators were locked out, a No Kings spokesperson told MS NOW, TheWrap reported. Organizers told Newsweek the page stayed down for about 90 minutes, and that even after it came back they couldn't post from it for roughly four hours.

"We couldn't post to it. Nobody could go to the page," Ezra Levin, a co-founder of Indivisible, one of the main groups behind No Kings, said on MeidasTouch, according to TheWrap. Organizers told Newsweek nearly 3,000 "No Kings: Vote Early" events were running that day in every state plus Washington, D.C.

Downtown, the crowd gathered at Gloria Molina Grand Park, across from City Hall, starting around 1 p.m., ABC7 reported. About an hour later, marchers set off on a loop of roughly 1.5 miles that started on Spring Street and came back to City Hall.

The local organizer, 50501 SoCal, and more than 30 partner groups aimed the L.A. rally at federal immigration enforcement and voting rights. "The same administration that invaded our city is now threatening to interfere with our right to vote," 50501 SoCal spokesperson Aztlan Tenochtitlan said in a statement carried by ABC7.

Organizers cast Saturday's march as a next step for the movement that took to the streets in June 2025, after federal immigration agents raided Los Angeles and troops from the National Guard and the Marines were sent in. They didn't go for subtle: the plans called for two Trump balloons, a 20-foot one in a diaper and a 15-foot one in a Russian military uniform.

The White House had already brushed off the voting push. Spokeswoman Lauren Bis told Newsweek that a group called No Kings talking up an election only shows it picked the wrong name.

Fights over suspended accounts aren't new for Meta. Newsweek noted that in 2025 the company agreed to a $25 million settlement with Trump, who had sued after Facebook and Instagram suspended him following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The company didn't admit wrongdoing.

In an Instagram post quoted by TheWrap, the coalition said it's back in control of the account and called on Meta to make sure this never happens again to any account, especially ones trying to reach voters. In California, the last day to register for the Nov. 3 election is today, Monday; same-day conditional registration is available after that.

Source: abc7.com, retrieved October 18, 2026. Other sources: TheWrap, newsweek.com.