Some Instagram users also claimed that the #Democrat hashtag was blocked on Instagram this week, CNN reported. Stone replied on X, “There’s an issue affecting people’s ability to search for a number of different hashtags on Instagram—not just those on the left. We’re working quickly to resolve this.”
Recent actions by Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg likely contributed to the speculation, including meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, donating $1 million Trump’s inauguration fund, promoting Republican Party ally Joel Kaplan to chief global affairs officer, adding UFC CEO and Trump ally Dana White to Meta’s board of directors, eliminating third-party fact-checking, and scaling back diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
As for TikTok, Semafor reported that following the app’s approximately 14-hour shutdown this past weekend, many creators began to post videos alleging that the algorithm felt different, with some claiming that their comments, feeds, and search functions were being censored.
Semafor reported that many of those videos had tallied millions of likes. A spokesperson for TikTok told Semafor, “Our policies and algorithms did not change over the weekend.”
Much like Zuckerberg, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has been perceived as seeking to curry favor with the Trump administration. Last week, he posted a video praising the then-president-elect after the Supreme Court upheld a law that would force a ban of the app in the U.S. He also met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., last month, and attended Monday’s inauguration.