Why Did Meta Suspend a US Senate Candidate's Instagram in the Middle of a Rally?

Posted by ck2 1 day ago

Comments

Comment by Verdex 1 day ago

There was this brief moment where star trek broke my suspension of disbelief. How is there not social media and the Internet in the star trek future? Sure they didn't have it when the show was written, but there still felt to be a disconnect.

Now I think, "how can there be a star trek future while we have social media and the Internet?"

Honestly, it's probably what started the eugenics war.

Comment by greesil 1 day ago

It's a slippery slope from Yelp reviews to genetically engineered super soldiers.

Comment by Verdex 1 day ago

It's not where I would have thought things would be going myself. But then there was that whole Myanmar thing with Facebook.

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

Funniest thing I read all day, thanks

Comment by Qem 1 day ago

Social media explains the Fermi Paradox. Once it arises technical civilizations regress.

Comment by xtiansimon 20 hours ago

See also

“Dangerous Memes; or, What the Pandorans let loose” In “Cosmos and Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context” Ed. Steven Dick and Mark Lupisella, NASA 297-318, 2010

https://www.susanblackmore.uk/chapters/dangerous-memes-or-wh...

Comment by loloquwowndueo 1 day ago

How can they not have social media in a universe where FTL communications and travel exist? Unthinkable!

Comment by tantalor 1 day ago

I posted it on my subspace story.

Comment by bilbo0s 1 day ago

It wasn’t the FTL and travel..

But as a pass time, I’m fair certain Holodecks buried pretty much everything else for good. Movies, songs, books, and as hard as it may be for tech people to believe..

Even social media.

Comment by EchoVoicy 1 day ago

Why browse somebody's Facebook when you can simulate then with 98% accuracy on the holodeck.

Comment by cosmicgadget 20 hours ago

Ah, the metaverse.

Comment by kakacik 1 day ago

And if you don't like somebody, punch them or worse... no flame wars in forums when you can use flamethrower

Comment by jswelker 1 day ago

Maybe they had it and wisely decided to get rid of it.

Comment by mindslight 1 day ago

Do you know how the Enterprise is this huge ship that carries a huge population, but yet very few people are seen working in each department? Yeah, the rest of them just stay in their bunks doomscrolling, subsisting on Doritos and soda from the replicator ("Diet Coke, cold"). A significant part of government provided basic housing is on starships, because it gives their working crews a sense of importance. When a ship is in range of other ships, space stations, or planets, transporter technology is used to seamlessly reallocate the population. The residents would notice if they bothered to look out their windows, but they mostly don't. It's also why the rest of the ship is so austere - the working crew knows that indulging base material desires is the fast track to becoming a bunk dweller.

Comment by ViktorRay 1 day ago

In Star Trek they don’t have television. I remember there was an episode where it is mentioned as a dead medium from the 20th century.

I’m guessing they don’t have films either.

They do have written books though.

Now the Star Trek TNG film Star Trek First Contact takes place in the 21st century and features rock and roll and characters talking in “modern” parlance.

I’m guessing that in between the 21st century and the 24th century mankind advanced and stopped watching tv and movies and went back to reading books.

Perhaps they advanced and abandoned social media as well. The Star Trek’s version of forums and the internet could be an idealized version of Hacker News where everyone actually follows the rules and Dang the AI moderator can just chill and not do much. It’s very possible.

Comment by cosmicgadget 19 hours ago

Kind of sad that the content ruined the reputation of the medium.

Comment by zug_zug 1 day ago

It's getting harder to believe this is accidental when it's 3 leftist situations in a row in such a short time.

Comment by Qem 1 day ago

Just look at the shenanigans Meta pulled in Brazil election.

Comment by throwaway894345 1 day ago

It doesn’t help that Zuckerberg is recorded pledging his loyalty to Trump.

Comment by piva00 1 day ago

It doesn't help Joel Kaplan was their main policy executive until this year. It doesn't help either to read all the beans spilled in "Careless People" about how Zuckerberg and Sandberg discovered they could use Facebook's/Meta's reach to tilt the political landscape and force candidates to be on their side regarding regulations.

They've been doing this for a decade, no reckoning yet in sight.

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

Same Trump he banned a few years ago?

Lol what "loyalty" are you talking about?

Comment by cosmicgadget 19 hours ago

The loyalty that was pledged after this happened? Otherwise it would have been a vow renewal.

Comment by financetechbro 1 day ago

If you think Zuck has the same loyalties today as he did years ago then you are blind and willingly ignorant

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

Let me fix that for you: "If you think Zuck has loyalties then you are blind and willingly ignorant"

Much better

Comment by red_candle_wax 1 day ago

Indeed, the real lesson is that these antisocial ghouls are the enemy of us all and should not be trusted in amy circumstance.

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

True

People that were cheering on when this happened to one side suddenly get surprised when the same thing happens to their side

Well well well how the turntables... [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFagogEOZz8

Comment by Xortl 17 hours ago

They are not the same thing, and it's hard to imagine you actually don't know that.

Comment by extraextra 17 hours ago

Yeah, they're not the same thing, DT was treated much much worse

Trump was banned for years and that seems to be ok with you

A Dem account is banned 1 hour and people here are crying wolf

Comment by throwaway894345 14 hours ago

What is being compared here? Trump being banned from platforms for trying to use those same platforms to overthrow the government? Comparing that to Democrats being censored for … campaigning for office?

Comment by nbajka 1 day ago

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Comment by Analemma_ 1 day ago

How about you find an example instead of assuming.

Comment by nbajka 1 day ago

You know a guy called Donald Trump?

Comment by g-b-r 1 day ago

When did that happens?

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

Donald Trump

Marjorie Taylor Greene

And others

Comment by watwut 1 day ago

Not comparable at all.

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

Lol what a hypocritical thing to say

Trump was banned for years and that seems to be ok with you

A Dem account is banned 1 hour and you cry wolf

The audacity

Comment by amanaplanacanal 1 day ago

Trump was banned for breaking the TOS. Is that the case here?

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

That's nonsense

You're clearly not informed here

He posted a benign video and the woke people running social media companies used that opportunity to retaliate

It was clearly a cheap shot for his political speech and political views

Comment by amanaplanacanal 1 day ago

I'm sure that's the truth in whatever reality you are living in.

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

[flagged]

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

Let's not forget that Trump was banned as well by Meta

Comment by mcphage 1 day ago

Oh, and what for?

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

For political speech

And Trump was banned for multiple years, this Dem account was blocked 1 hour and people are already crying wolf

Comment by watwut 1 day ago

Oh yeah, which exact political speech? Cause these two things are not symmetrical at all.

Lets compare the reasons and speeches rather then hiding behind "political" euphemism.

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

[flagged]

Comment by watwut 1 day ago

No, DT got away with much more and longer. And there was no real infractuon here from their side

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

[flagged]

Comment by lowmagnet 1 day ago

What a weird thing to say about him. Clearly you haven't read his work.

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” - George Orwell

Comment by kobalsky 1 day ago

what's the point of moving the goalpost here?, are you gonna pull the terms and conditions of meta? trump wasn't prosecuted

Comment by extraextra 16 hours ago

People are too emotionally invested in their side to care about any principles unfortunately

Freedom of speech? We don't want that for the "other side"

Censorship? Yes please, but only for the "other side"

Arguing in bad faith? Anything just to make the "other side" look unflattering

Comment by Henchman21 1 day ago

Ah yes because the conservative movement at the moment is so entirely beaten down and hunched in a defensive crouch because they have exactly zero power in the world right now? I mean, it isn’t like ideologues on the right own the entire media landscape or anything right? Or are in the White House, hold both houses of Congress, and have little despots in training all over the fucking planet.

But yeah, sure it happens to Conservatives at the same rate. You just won’t hear about it here because the Evil Left controls a site run by Silicon Valley. In 2026.

Really just shut the fuck up pal.

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by bko 1 day ago

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Comment by treyd 1 day ago

"Small candidates", for US senate?

Comment by bko 1 day ago

It's not really competitive. She's down by ten points.

Comment by cogman10 1 day ago

6 points according to the latest Siena Poll [1]. The gap has been narrowing ever since she won the primary.

Still likely to lose (IMO), but it's more competitive than we've seen in Florida for a long time.

[1] https://sri.siena.edu/2026/10/28/nytimes-siena-poll-of-likel...

Comment by throwaway894345 1 day ago

This is a florida senate race

EDIT: I’m mistaken, this is a US senate candidate. I was confused by the ambiguous wording in the article.

Comment by treyd 1 day ago

Angie Nixon is currently a Florida state rep who is running for US senate: https://angienixon.com/

Comment by throwaway894345 1 day ago

Yes, I’m mistaken. I didn’t realize the ambiguity in the “Florida Democratic Senate candidate” (I misinterpreted it as “Democratic candidate for Florida Senate”).

Comment by throooooo 1 day ago

Yes an extremely contentious race if you pay attention to politics. A year ago if anyone had said Dems have a chance of a Senate majority during the midterms you'd have been laughed out of the building.

Comment by throwaway894345 1 day ago

Again, this isn’t a US senate race, it’s a Florida senate race.

EDIT: I’m mistaken, this is a US senate candidate. I was confused by the ambiguous wording in the article.

Comment by throwaway894345 1 day ago

Small candidates have a lot of impact, especially when you want to (for example) build a data center. Not that this is necessary to explain it—the cost of the censorship to Meta is negligible (an employee presses a button or an AI makes an API call), so even a small reward is worthwhile.

> In 2021 we saw a coordinated deplatforming of a sitting president across practically every social media platform.

It wasn’t coordinated, it was a bunch of social media companies responding to the same event, notably the president in question using his social media accounts to try to overthrow the US government.

Comment by luizfzs 1 day ago

It's not. Meta did the same thing during Brazil's elections. Left-wing politicians' and influencer's accounts suspended, while right wings' stayed working. Even with the widespread knowledge that the right is notorious for using bot accounts to inflate followers and to generate engagement.

The big tech companies are on the side of power and money.

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

Lol, let's not forget Meta banned Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene and others before

You pretend like this is somehow a partisan issue

Comment by parineum 1 day ago

> Even with the widespread knowledge that the right is notorious for using bot accounts...

Are you, by chance, of the left?

Comment by bix6 1 day ago

Because the left came up with “flood the zone”

All research I’ve seen on this shows the right significantly outbotting the left.

Comment by parineum 1 day ago

Outbotting and implying it's a problem with the right, specifically are two very different things.

Comment by bix6 1 day ago

I don’t understand what you mean by this?

Comment by parineum 1 day ago

Your initial implication is that left wing accounts get banned while right wing accounts don't (an already spurious point), despite right wing accounts being notorious for botting.

That implies that left wing accounts shouldn't have been banned because they are not notorious for botting.

With the next reply, you hedge and say that the right "outbots" the left. That weakens your initial point that the left wing account bans are unjustified.

However, my initial reply was in response to the claim that it's "widespread knowledge" that the right outbots the left. That is not knowledge I consider to be self evident and I was assuming/asking that you got that knowledge from left leaning sources.

Comment by bix6 1 day ago

I am not the GP fyi.

It is widespread knowledge that the right outbots the left, presuming you bother to inform yourself about the issue.

Comment by parineum 1 day ago

Where does this widespread knowledge come from?

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by aftbit 1 day ago

>“We are calling on Meta to immediately restore the page and provide an explanation for its removal,” she continued. “Voters deserve access to critical election information, especially in these final days.”

>Nixon reported that the account was back up an hour later.

Comment by dirck-norman 1 day ago

This article is bait.

The account was created only 1 week earlier and was flagged as a campaign impersonation account.

Whether that's honest and truthful, we can only know if Meta is transparent. But, not including that information shows what the article's intent is.

> "During campaign season, we pay particular attention to accounts that could be impersonating candidates or campaigns and misleading voters. The account in question was created only a week and a half ago, so our systems automatically and mistakenly assessed it to be impersonating the Nixon for Senate campaign. The account was restored on Tuesday evening after three hours."

Comment by rchaud 1 day ago

This is the same site owner that allows Alberta pro-separatism pages to operate out of Kenya and India with impunity.

Comment by vrganj 1 day ago

After what Facebook tried pulling in Brazil, it is incredibly naive to think this was just another oopsie-daisy that once again, one that just so happens to impact the left, again.

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

Lol, let's not forget Meta banned Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene and others before

You pretend like this is somehow a partisan issue

Comment by vrganj 1 day ago

That was back when Democrats were in power and the mask hadn't come off yet.

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

[flagged]

Comment by vrganj 1 day ago

Trump being banned wasn't during any election.

This was. As was the messing with Lula. That was when the mask really came off. Thankfully, the people prevailed.

Comment by extraextra 1 day ago

Trump was banned in middle of 2021, for a full year and a half before the midterms of 2022

Now that's a real attempt to silence someone's political speech into obscurity

Clearly much much worse

Comment by phyzix5761 1 day ago

They randomly suspend small business accounts too for no reason.

Comment by bko 1 day ago

I love the main character syndrome on display. You have this regional Florida race, not particularly competitive. They do campaign events all day every day. They see an issue with their Instagram account which gets fixed an hour later and they immediately think it's Zuck behind the scenes in his war room following her race and rally with a big red button on his desk to cut her off at the crucial window. Incredible stuff.

Comment by cogman10 1 day ago

> You have this regional Florida race

It's a statewide race.

> They see an issue with their Instagram account which gets fixed an hour later and they immediately think it's Zuck behind the scenes in his war room following her race and rally with a big red button on his desk to cut her off at the crucial window. Incredible stuff.

This isn't the first time Meta has pulled the plug on rallies and leftwing organizations [1]. It's also not out of character for them to try and push right wing narratives. [2]

[1] https://www.ms.now/news/instagram-shut-down-a-no-kings-accou...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...

Comment by bko 1 day ago

You miss the big one where all the social media companies deplatformed a sitting us president but point taken. But I think this is all too low stakes for that kind of action

Comment by cogman10 1 day ago

That's a non-sequitur to the discussion at hand.

Comment by bko 1 day ago

It helps your point. That the social media agencies are interested and willing to coordinate and suppress opposition.

Comment by goodmythical 1 day ago

I mean, companies are responsible for the actions of their employees within a certain scope and it is not outside the realm of possibility that an individual interested in curtailing the momentum of this candidate works at Meta in a capacity that would allow interfering with the account.

Accusing them without due evidence is sloppy, but it's not like the claim carries genuinely zero possibility of being true.

Comment by exe34 1 day ago

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Comment by jrm4 1 day ago

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Comment by tw04 1 day ago

You honestly think meta couldn’t setup an automated system to target democratic candidate’s accounts and mess with them during a scheduled rally or live stream? As if zuck has to personally do anything to make that happen? This is hardly tinfoil hat territory, it would be trivial to put in place, and until I see it is coincidentally happening to their R counterparts, it tracks with Zuck’s current political leanings.

Comment by valuegram 1 day ago

If you have a strong reaction to this, and had the opposite reaction when social media lockouts were used against the other party, I’d suggest a new approach: decide where you stand on the tool/weapon based on foundational principles, regardless of whether it’s currently being wielded by people you agree or disagree with.

Comment by Jordan-117 1 day ago

Were any of the candidates blocked here inciting a violent insurrection in an attempt to overturn an election? Because I'm pretty comfortable with that being grounds for blocking.

Comment by valuegram 1 day ago

Assuming your premise holds, that’s a fair example of a principle-based distinction, which is what I’m advocating for.

Would you hold the same standard, and react the same way, if the parties were flipped? The hard part is answering that before looking for differences. Confirmation bias is powerful, and if any of us start from a conclusion, we’ll always find a justification.

Comment by sagarm 1 day ago

If an outgoing Democratic president had used his platform to undermine free and fair elections, they should not only be denied the megaphone they used. They should be prosecuted, imprisoned, and barred from any future office.

Comment by happytoexplain 1 day ago

It's perfectly possible to have a consistent stance on the tool and feel differently about the tool's application in different circumstances.

You're implying that if two things occurred with inverted political parties, then they can't also have other differences. I think there's a probably a name for this fallacy, considering how common it is.

If you have two instances in mind that you think actually are the same except for the inverted political parties, and you can find somebody here who disagrees on that pair, then that would make sense to engage with, rather than this vague broad implication of hypocrisy.

Comment by snowwrestler 1 day ago

> decide where you stand on the tool/weapon based on foundational principles

If you actually do this, then it doesn’t matter whether the outcomes seem to help one party vs another.

The second part of your comment invalidates the test in the first part of your comment.

Comment by valuegram 1 day ago

Agreed, that’s the point. The first part describes the inconsistency; the second is how to avoid it. If your principles lead you to react the same way both times, the test doesn’t apply to you.

Comment by lapcat 1 day ago

I've been reading the book "Careless People," and I came upon these passages just yesterday, referring to Mark Zuckerberg in 2015:

> Mark opens the meeting by talking admiringly about what he calls “street fighter tactics” that Uber is employing against politicians around the world and how successful they’ve been.

> He launches into a spiel about Empereror Augustus, his favorite emperor, who led the transformation of Rome from a republic to an empire.

> He wants to establish a team within Facebook to figure out how to build the tools that will use the algorithm and platform to pressure adversaries, including politicians who oppose us, to bolster the policy team.

Comment by cyanydeez 1 day ago

so, like most things, it's likely a blessed invididual in meta is given the privlege of doing whatever they want, as part of the "boys will be boys" club.

Comment by mindslight 1 day ago

The simplest explanation is that it's chaotic damage from whatever overzealous autocensorship systems they have. The extent of the damage is moderated based on who you know - whether it's social media reach to someone employed there who knows the strings to pull, pay to play line to an account rep, or even ahead-of-time "this needs to be protected" due to threats/back scratching from/of the regime.

At least to me, this is a good working explanation - the conspiracy angles prove things that don't need to be proven to effect sustainable solutions. The real issue, as it has always been, is that we need to move away from these centralized communications technologies controlled by corpos. Their concentrated power is what makes their censorship inevitable.

So pragmatically as things stand - while it's completely understandable that political campaigns (and everyone else) need to engage with where people are, they should also be making it a point to nudge followers to distributed forums. Use censorship-eager popular forums to recruit new followers, but maintain your base of members with censorship-resistant communication methods.

Or politically, assuming a critical mass of people frustrated at this problem that we can effect change, what we need is anti-trust enforcement that breaks up these companies into smaller entities, chiefly by un-bundling apps (client software) from hosting services and mandating published APIs for the two markets to interact.

Comment by flir 1 day ago

It's the simplest explanation, but it's also the explanation you or I would reach for as a fig leaf if we were trying to get away with something shady.

I guess the best approach is to look at a string of such events, and see if they add up to a consistent pattern of behaviour. The longer the string, the less likely it is to be accidental. (But this assumes the bad actor isn't trying to cover their tracks in active ways. Ho hum).

The change I would like to see: feeds must be in date order, most recent first. Posts should only appear in feeds if you have actively chosen to "follow" the originating account in some way.

I honestly think these two simple changes would solve many of the problems we have today, as a society.

Comment by mindslight 1 day ago

> I guess the best approach is to look at a string of such events, and see if they add up to a consistent pattern of behaviour.

Sure, except, why? Such behavior is (unfortunately) not currently illegal, so it's not like proving it would mean it could be straightforwardly punished.

Then furthermore, the specific groups that feel aggrieved shift based on who is in power. The only way to get actual reform is to form a coalition with people who don't feel particularly aggrieved right now, but still respect that it could happen to them in the future.

Making it into a personal us-vs-them just makes it so people who don't care about your "us" aren't inclined to see the issue!

> The change I would like to see: feeds must be in date order, most recent first. Posts should only appear in feeds if you have actively chosen to "follow" the originating account in some way.

Sure, but keep in mind this is still a political solution, whether through regulation or merely through shaming the centralizers. Meaning it requires the political will I am describing above.

Also from a technical perspective I don't see that this would directly address the problem in the article. You need an additional point, to get there indirectly - if the only feeds shown were subscribed ("followed"), there should never be a reason to censor an account from speaking to people who have subscribed to it or otherwise directly seek it out.

Comment by flir 1 day ago

> Also from a technical perspective I don't see that this would directly address the problem in the article.

We're increasingly Balkanised. Part of that is algorithms that show us "the other" at its worst (outrage farming). This UX change would restrict outrage from being shoved down people's throats, and at least stop the problem getting worse.

It severely limits the reach of new outrage farmers, and attrition will take care of the current ones.

Knock-on effect, hopefully, is a return to some kind of sanity across the societal board. (Bearing in mind you can't turn an ocean liner on a sixpence).

> there should never be a reason to censor an account from speaking to people who have subscribed to it.

Not what I'm describing. I'm suggesting a change that means you have to go looking for bots, they don't get shoved in front of you. (However you define "bots").

Comment by mindslight 1 day ago

I wholly agree with where you're coming from, but I don't see how it's connected to the original article.

If you think the censorship is the problem, then how does what you're saying address that?

If you think the frustration with the censorship is the problem (ie part of the outrage farming), then I suppose what you're saying is a solution in a roundabout way. But trying to fix a small problem by casting it as one aspect of a much larger problem seems self-defeating.

Comment by flir 1 day ago

Gotcha. Not a direct solution - an attempt to get to a place where some of the norms have been resurrected. There was a point in my lifetime when CEOs didn't do Nazi salutes, even if they were a bit Henry Ford on the inside. I'd like to get back there, and I think it would restrain some of the worst excesses we see today.

Now you've forced me to lay it out like that, I don't even believe it myself.

We're really screwed, aren't we?

Comment by motbus3 1 day ago

[flagged]

Comment by lapcat 1 day ago

He had bodyguards.

Comment by motbus3 1 day ago

Have you heard about Argentinean escraches?

Comment by bix6 1 day ago

They quit? I would too.

Comment by dmitrygr 1 day ago

Depressing and worrisome. But at least there is a small funny bit to it. When the president was a Democrat, Facebook did this to Republicans. When the president’s a Republican, they do it to Democrats. Evidently, they don’t even have a side. They just flip-flop to support whoever is in charge

Comment by tw04 1 day ago

Source? I recall major platforms suspending accounts that were literally posting nazi propaganda in violation of platform rules. I don’t recall a single instance of meta suspending the page of an otherwise rule-abiding Republican candidate’s account in the middle of a rally.

Comment by rdedev 1 day ago

This is the assymetry that the left have to deal with. The far right spew hateful propoganda and get themselves banned. Suddenly the platforms are biased towards the left. Zuck even got in on this to curry favours

Comment by kstrauser 1 day ago

That’s exactly right. Every time I heard hand-wringing about some right-wing person getting suspended, it’d inevitably trace back to that person saying something incredibly outlandish, racist, or otherwise rule breaking. I did not see one example of anyone being suspended for being a Republican. Not one. Zero.

Comment by throwaway894345 1 day ago

Is there evidence that Facebook meddled in elections to benefit Democrats under a Democratic administration?

Comment by tamimio 1 day ago

Fecebook out of all FAGMAN companies should be dissolved for good: it produces nothing of a value (they don’t make an useful products like email in google or a hardware laptop in MS for example), even big products like whatsapp or instagram were acquired, it is comically evil, it’s probably the first company to eavesdrop on its users daily convos through their apps to show ads, and it operates like a mafia or a syndicate, and you would know if you had your account auto flagged or banned, there’s no email or a person to talk to (that was before AI chat support too), you need to know someone who knows someone who knows someone to pull some strings inside to look at your account..