Meta fixing glitch hiding the word ‘democratic’ in Instagram search results

Meta has said it is fixing a glitch on Instagram that displays a “hidden results” message when users search for terms such as “Democrat” or “Democrats”.

Currently, users who search for “#Democrat” or “#Democrats” see a message saying “We have hidden these results” and that the search term could include “sensitive content.”

In a statement to the BBC, Meta said: “We’re aware of an error affecting hashtags across the political spectrum and we are working quickly to resolve it.”

The incident sparked accusations of political bias from some social media users, who noted that the incident began shortly after president Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

Meta denied the allegations, saying that Instagram experienced similar problems with searches for “#Republicans” which also shows restricted content. The hashtag “Republican” still produces around 3.3 million search results.

Users reported experiencing issues with the search of other hashtags, including “#abort”, “#prochoice”, “#climatechange” and “#blacklivesmatter”.

Matt Navarra, a social media analyst, called the recent glitch “embarrassing” for Instagram, BBC reported.

“In a hyper-partisan environment, even unintentional errors like this can escalate into accusations of partisanship,” he told the BBC.

“If these issues are not resolved quickly, they risk fuelling conspiracy theories and damaging Meta’s reputation.”

Meta-owner Mark Zuckerberg attended the president Trump’s inauguration, further aligning Meta with the new administration weeks after prominent Republican Joel Kaplan was selected to replace Sir Nick Clegg as Meta’s global affairs chief.

Several other chief executives of prominent tech firms attended the event, including Tesla’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Open AI’s Sam Altman.

On Tuesday, newly inaugurated US president Donald Trump unveiled a massive joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank that aims to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure across the country over the next four years.

The project, called Stargate, will begin with an initial $100 billion investment to construct data centres and computing infrastructure needed to power next-generation AI development. Trump claimed the initiative would create 100,000 jobs “almost immediately”.

Earlier this month, Meta unveiled significant changes to its content moderation policies, with Zuckerberg describing Trump’s re-election as “a cultural turning point that influenced the change.”

Previously, Trump and his allies accused Meta of silencing conservative voices, threatening legal actions against Zuckerberg in July 2021. However, following Meta’s recent move to scale back fact-checking, Trump praised the company.

Several organisations tackling hate speech online have recently criticised the plans announced by Meta to axe its third-party fact-checking programme.

The social media giant said that it will allow more speech by “lifting restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discourse”, instead focusing its enforcement practices on “illegal and high-severity violations.”

Independent non-profit organisation CyberWell, which focuses on combatting online antisemitism and Holocaust denial on social media, criticised the move, describing it as an exchange of human bias in a small and contained group of fact-checkers for human bias at scale.

Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, founder and executive director of the online antisemitism watchdog, said that the plans represent a “systematic lowering of the bar” on how Meta intends to enforce its community standards, adding that the organisation is “deeply concerned” given mounting evidence of how online hate speech, incendiary content, and harassment lead to real-world harm including hate crimes, terror attacks, and child suicide.