Follow-Up: 14 Attorneys General Press Meta Over Erroneous No Kings Instagram Suspension; California's Rob Bonta Among Signatories, Response Due October 29
OAKLAND — The California Attorney General's Office (OAG) announced in Oakland on October 26 that California Attorney General Rob Bonta has joined a letter from 14 attorneys general to Meta, demanding that the company explain its October 17 erroneous suspension of the No Kings Coalition's Instagram account and requiring a response by Thursday, October 29.
"Millions of Californians rely on social media to organize, read news, and obtain information about upcoming elections," Bonta said in a statement. "Today, I am asking Meta to further explain its suspension of the No Kings Coalition Instagram account, which occurred at the height of the coalition's organized and widely promoted efforts to support early voting. My office is committed to ensuring communication platforms like Meta remain open for robust political speech, particularly so during critical election cycles."
According to the letter as released by the attorneys general's offices, the No Kings Coalition's Instagram account was suspended on October 17, the group's nationwide day of action supporting early voting, at about 10:30 a.m. PT (1:30 p.m. ET). Account administrators said they received no response from Meta for about 90 minutes, and full access was not restored for more than four hours. Meta has admitted the suspension was an error and attributed it to a sharp increase in activity that looked like automated bot traffic. The letter summary released by the Oregon Department of Justice adds that Meta said its automated monitoring system detected a surge from a Claude SI tool reading profiles, posts and hashtags, and that the high-volume traffic was wrongly flagged as illicit "bot" activity, triggering "automated protections" that took the account offline.
The letter asks Meta to explain in detail why the account was suspended, when the company became aware of it and what steps it took to fix it; whether and how human reviewers were involved in suspending and restoring the account; whether any other legitimate election-related accounts were suspended or made unavailable this election cycle; how it will distinguish legitimate political activity from bot traffic going forward; and how users whose accounts are wrongly suspended can get them back. The attorneys general asked Meta to respond no later than Thursday, October 29.
The letter was led by Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and signed by the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, New York, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont and Washington, and of the District of Columbia. Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said in his office's statement: "Meta's actions have raised a significant number of questions and red flags about the policies, procedures, and protections they have in place for legitimate political speech. The company owes the public a clear explanation of what went wrong and what it's doing to make sure it doesn't happen again." The November 3 midterm elections are just over a week away, and early voting is under way across much of the United States.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：加州总检察长 Rob Bonta 官方肖像（2023年，资料图）。照片：Douglas Despres，加州总检察长办公室，公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Official portrait of California Attorney General Rob Bonta (2023, file photo). Photo by Douglas Despres, California Attorney General's Office, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
- 2026-10-17Follow-Up: 'No Kings: Vote Early' Day of Action Draws Crowds Across the U.S., Hundreds to Over a Thousand at Florida Events
- 2026-10-17Follow-Up: 'No Kings: Vote Early' Action Day Spans the U.S. as Thousands Rally and March Outside Los Angeles City Hall
- 2026-10-17Thousands March to Seattle Center for 'No Kings' Rally as Seattle Activates Joint Information Center
- 2026-10-17Palm Springs City Hall, Riverside County's Only Ballot Drop-Off Open Saturday, Takes In 278 Ballots in Three Hours
- 2026-10-18'No Kings' Rallies Sweep the Country With an Early-Voting Push: More Than 3,000 Actions Ahead of the Midterms
- 2026-10-19Meta Mistakenly Suspended the No Kings Coalition's Instagram Account for About 90 Minutes on Saturday; Sanders Speaks Out on Sunday as Murphy Calls for a Probe
- 2026-10-26Follow-Up: 14 Attorneys General Press Meta Over Erroneous No Kings Instagram Suspension; California's Rob Bonta Among Signatories, Response Due October 29This story
