Instagram has found itself at the center of a censorship controversy after hiding search results for ‘Democrats’. At this time, Meta has said it is working tirelessly to fix a problem with Instagram which results in a “results hidden” message when users search for the terms “Democrat” or “Democrats”.
Understanding the Controversy
Some social media users have accused the company of political bias, pointing out that the hidden results issue began occurring after President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, – an event that was attended by Meta owner, Mark Zuckerberg.
Reacting to the online backlash, Meta has insisted that is not the case, explaining that it’s a technical problem that also affected other hashtags, including a Republican one.
But, social media expert Matt Navarra said it was “embarrassing” for Instagram regardless.
In his words; “In a hyper-partisan environment, even unintentional errors like this can escalate into accusations of partisanship,” he said, adding, “If these issues are not resolved quickly they risk fuelling conspiracy theories and damaging Meta’s reputation.”
Democrats V. Republicans Hashtag
While users who type “#Democrat” or “#Democrats” get no results on Instagram, the hashtag “Republican” on the other hand returns 3.3 million posts on the social media platform.
By manually searching Instagram for “Democrats”, rather than clicking on a hashtag, users are presented with a screen reading “We’ve hidden these results. Results for the term you searched for may contain sensitive content,” it said.
There are also limited results when people search for “Republicans” as opposed to the term “Republican”. “We’re aware of an error affecting hashtags across the political spectrum and we are working quickly to resolve it”, Meta announced in a statement.
