Instagram blocked searches for #democrats and other political hashtags

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blocked searches for #democrats and other political hashtags

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blocked searches related to a number of political hashtags, including #democrats, #democrat, #jan6th, #republicans and a number of other terms Tuesday. Users who searched for these hashtags were instead greeted with a notice that “we’ve hidden these results” because they “may contain sensitive content.”

It’s not clear exactly how many search terms were affected but users on

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reported that

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 were unsearchable. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone blamed an unspecified “issue” in

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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 prompted speculation that the “issue” was politically motivated. Zuckerberg recently moved to end Meta’s

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, roll back

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that prohibited dehumanizing language and slurs targeting immigrants and LGBTQ people. The company also internally shuttered its

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. Stone, however, said the issue affected “a number of different hashtags on

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– not just those on the left.”

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Indeed, there seemed to be some inconsistency in what was blocked. #Democrat, #democrats and #republicans were reportedly affected, but #republican was viewable. Users reported that #constitution, #johnoliver and #****** were also unviewable. Meta now seems to have addressed most of the hashtags in question, though the company hasn’t explained what caused the “issue.”

This, notably, isn’t the first time

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has inexplicably blocked searches for hashtags. Meta blocked hashtags related to LGBTQ content and labeled it as “sensitive content”

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. The company said earlier this year that was an error, noting that “we do not consider LGBTQ+ terms to be sensitive under our policies.” In 2020,

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briefly prevented users from sharing posts with the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. The company said it was a mistake and blamed its

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features.

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#

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#blocked #searches #democrats #political #hashtags

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