As Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg rubbed elbows with fellow front-row billionaires during Donald Trump’s inauguration Monday, Instagram users began to notice that searches for the term “Democrats” yielded rather dark results.
“Hey, Meta, what the fuck is this?” influencer Mercedes Chandler asked in an Instagram video alongside a screenshot of an error screen.
When some users searched the hashtag “Democrat” Monday morning, they were hit with the message, “We’ve hidden these results. Results for the term you’ve searched for may contain sensitive content.”
In a statement to the BBC Tuesday, Meta said, “We’re aware of an error affecting hashtags across the political spectrum and we are working quickly to resolve it.”
The company insisted this was not targeted and that the disruption impacted other search terms, including one unspecified Republican hashtag.
But once service was restored, users were still claiming that their feeds looked different than before.
Multiple social media users told Daily Kos that when they searched the term “Democrat,” the results were flooded with Republican content, often from right-wing media like Breitbart, Fox News, and Newsmax.
“I think it’s time to leave Instagram. This is totally fucked,” one user posted alongside a screenshot of their MAGA-laden search results.
A screenshot from an Instagram user who noticed a search for the term “Democrat” yielded several right-wing results.
In our own independent Instagram searches, Daily Kos acquired similar findings. However, we noticed a mix of Republican and Democratic content from the “Republican” hashtag as well.
Meta declined Daily Kos’ request for comment.
While theories abound regarding what could be happening behind the scenes with Instagram’s algorithm, Zuckerberg has been making much more apparent MAGA-friendly moves.
Zuckerberg, who notoriously butted heads with Trump during his first administration, gave in and bent the knee to the convicted felon this time around.
The college lonely boy-turned-multibillionaire not only gave a whopping $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, but he also dismantled Meta’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs; removed fact checking from Facebook and Instagram; and made changes to Meta’s “hateful conduct” policy, which now allows the use of hate speech toward women, transgender, and nonbinary people.
“We’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more,” Zuckerberg said in a statement earlier this month.
And as the freshly permed Zuckerberg cozies up to the Nazi-saluting Elon Musk, he’s also announced a company move to Texas—where Musk’s empire is headquartered.
Ultimately, it’s unclear if Instagram’s algorithm is laden with MAGA content because of string pulling behind the scenes or if content from right-leaning creators is just simply more popular.
One thing, however, is clear: Owners of the social media platforms that connect people, shape opinions, and keep people informed are eating out of Trump’s hand going into his second term.
What they do with this newfound power remains to be seen.
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