Meta accused of pro-Trump bias after #Democrat hashtag blocked on Instagram

Meta is facing accusations of political bias after Democrat-related hashtags were hidden on its Instagram app following Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration Monday.

Social media users noticed searches for #Democrat, #DNC and other related terms like #TheLeft were not returning any results for at least several hours, while searches for terms like #Republican, #RNC and #TheRight yielded millions of posts.

People posted screenshots to other social media platforms showing messages that read, “We’ve hidden these results,” after searching Democratic hashtags on Instagram.

This came after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg attended Trump’s inauguration, leaving some to question whether the results were hidden intentionally.

In response, some Reddit users said they were deleting their Instagram and Facebook accounts. 

A Meta spokesperson would not answer questions on the record about how or why the results were blocked, but referred CBC News to a post on Meta’s Threads platform by Andy Stone, a communications officer with the company.

“There’s an issue affecting people’s ability to search for a number of different hashtags on Instagram — not just those on the left. We’re working quickly to resolve this,” Stone posted.

The spokesperson would not say what other hashtags were hidden, and did not confirm whether the issue had been resolved.

One Reddit user compiled a list of nearly two dozen hashtags that appeared to be affected, including #queer, #prochoice, #berniesanders and #jan6th.

On Tuesday afternoon, Instagram users were reporting they were able to see results again under hashtags that had previously been hidden.

Tech bosses cosy up to Trump 

Dann Downes, a professor of information and communication studies at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, says the hashtags being hidden on Meta platforms so soon after Trump’s inauguration suggested it was no coincidence. 

“It doesn’t look good,” Downes said. “It just reinforces the idea that Zuckerberg is following Elon Musk to try to get closer to power.”

Zuckerberg and other tech bosses have made a series of moves lately to cosy up to the new Republican president.

The CEO visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort back in November and donated $1 million US to the president’s inauguration fund.

Earlier this month, Meta named Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican, as its new global affairs chief, and removed its fact-checking practice — which Trump and other Republicans had criticized — with Zuckerberg saying Trump’s re-election marked a “cultural tipping point.”

Meta also announced this month that it would disband its diversity, equity and inclusion team and end other programs designed to promote diversity in hiring — policies often criticized by Republicans — and updated its “hateful conduct” policy to allow posts that call 2SLGBTQ people mentally ill. 

Social media landscape is shifting

Zuckerberg was seated prominently at Trump’s inauguration ceremony alongside Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai and X owner Musk, who spent at least $250 million US to help Trump win the election and was given a role in the president’s administration.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was also in attendance Monday, after Trump announced a 75-day delay on the enforcement of a U.S. TikTok ban.

Downes says the whole social media landscape in the U.S. is shifting, and partisan politics are playing out in communication channels. 

“Zuckerberg and Musk are pretending that they’re not media owners, and that these platforms aren’t forms of disseminating information — that they’re supposed to be transparent channels where users can engage in social contact with one another, people can can talk about whatever issues they want, this notion of prioritizing free speech,” he said. 

But Downes noted that by filtering certain content, they’re doing the opposite, and shifting the terrain of their platforms.

“You’re saying, ‘It used to do this, now it does this, and I can make those choices whenever I want.’ “