HARTFORD, Conn. — Connecticut Attorney General William Tong led a group of 14 attorneys general, including those of Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont, in a letter Monday asking Meta to explain why it suspended the No Kings Coalition's Instagram account during nationwide demonstrations on Oct. 17 and how it plans to protect election-related activity on its platforms.

According to Tong's office, the coalition reported that its account was suspended at about 1:30 p.m. Eastern time on Oct. 17, during a nationwide day of action to support early voting. Administrators said they got no response from Meta for about 90 minutes as they tried to restore the account, and the coalition said it took more than four hours for access to be fully restored.

Meta has said its automated tool for monitoring AI noticed a surge in the use of a Claude AI tool reading profiles, posts and hashtags, the attorney general's office said. That traffic was wrongly flagged as illicit "bot" activity, triggering "automated protections" that took the account offline. The attorneys general said the explanation suggests Meta cannot tell legitimate political activity from bots.

"The company should be able to handle a legitimate surge in online traffic related to a widely publicized day of action," Tong said.

The letter asks Meta to explain in detail why the account was suspended, when the company learned of the suspension, what it did to fix the error and whether human reviewers were involved. It also asks Meta to disclose any other legitimate election-related accounts suspended or made unavailable during the election cycle, to describe how it will distinguish legitimate activity from bot traffic, and to explain how it maintains and publicizes a way for users to challenge unjust suspensions.

The attorneys general asked for a response by Oct. 29, ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

The letter was also signed by the attorneys general of California, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Washington.

This brief was drafted by AI from a public agency or political press release and published by The New England Signal. Why we use AI for stories like this one.