The Daily Populous Tuesday January 21st, 2025 evening edition
Authored by bbc.com and submitted by PSU02

Meta says its working urgently to fix a problem with Instagram which results in a "results hidden" message when users search for the terms "Democrat" or "Democrats".

Some social media users have accused the company of political bias, pointing out the issue has been occurring after President Donald Trump's inauguration on Monday, which was attended by Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg.

Meta has insisted that is not the case, saying it is a technical problem which has also affected other hashtags, including a Republican one.

However, social media expert Matt Navarra said it was "embarrassing" for Instagram regardless.

"In a hyper-partisan environment, even unintentional errors like this can escalate into accusations of partisanship," he said.

"If these issues are not resolved quickly they risk fuelling conspiracy theories and damaging Meta's reputation."

While users who type "#Democrat" or "#Democrats" see no results, the hashtag "Republican" returns 3.3 million posts on the social media platform.

By manually searching Instagram for "Democrats", rather than clicking on a hashtag, users are greeted by a screen reading "we've hidden these results".

"Results for the term you searched for may contain sensitive content," it says.

There are also limited results when people search for "Republicans" as opposed to "Republican".

"We're aware of an error affecting hashtags across the political spectrum and we are working quickly to resolve it", Meta told the BBC in a statement.

sername1111111 on January 21st, 2025 at 15:02 UTC »

They've also blocked #michelleobama, #joebiden, #kamala, #kamalaharris and #berniesanders, these are all still blocked as of 10am EST. (Edit: back up as of 10:37am EST).

speakertothedamned on January 21st, 2025 at 14:55 UTC »

We need Teddy Roosevelt to rise from the grave and start busting trusts left and right.

All these major tech orgs need to be broken up just like Bell did back in the day.

And social media in general simply does not serve the public good.

It's become nothing but a massive source of manipulation, propaganda, and disinformation.

It's yellow journalism dialed up to 11.

CrewZealousideal964 on January 21st, 2025 at 14:53 UTC »

Even if it was a technical glitch, what were they messing with that resulted in these specific terms being blocked?

This was a demonstration.