Instagram ‘accidentally’ blocks democrat-related search terms
image: Nik via Unsplash
One day after Donald Trump's inauguration as new US president, search results linked to Biden, Harris and Obama were flagged on Instagram as ‘sensitive content’. In Dutch newspaper ‘de Volkskrant’, PhD candidate Danny Mekic says this is ‘totally unacceptable’.
This week, results related to the Democractic Party in the United States were blocked by Instagram. Search terms with hashtags including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or Barack Obama gave zero results. Meta says in a short comment in de Volkskrant that the blocking of these search terms was caused by a technical issue.
Danny Mekic has other ideas: ‘Tech companies should stop hiding behind technical systems they claim made a mistake.’ It remains unclear why these search terms were unavailable. ‘Perhaps it was a human decision to block these search terms.’ Another option could be that Instagram users were massively reporting democratic search terms. Whatever the reason, Mekic says the outcome was ‘totally unacceptable’.