Meta says a tool linked to Anthropic's Claude set off its mistaken suspension of the No Kings Coalition's Instagram account, Bloomberg reports

Meta suspended the No Kings Coalition's Instagram account on Saturday 17 October, Bloomberg reported. The coalition said the page was down for about 90 minutes and that its administrators were locked out until 5:33 p.m. New York time.

On Sunday, Meta's communications chief Andy Stone said in a post that a tool linked to Claude had been “accessing profiles, posts and hashtags at roughly four times the normal rate in intense bursts Saturday,” Bloomberg reported. Stone said the activity “resembled automated bot traffic rather than an ordinary human browsing our systems.” TNW reported his apology: “We want to reiterate our sincere apology for the error.” An automated review about an hour later found the account should not have been removed, TNW and Bloomberg reported, though giving administrators their access back took longer.

Neither Bloomberg nor TNW says which Claude tool it was, who was running it or what it was doing, and neither carries a comment from Anthropic. Stone's own post was not opened for this story, so his words are given as the two outlets report them.

The coalition is a political protest group, and the suspension came about two weeks before the US midterms. The case shows a new kind of agent incident: not an agent misbehaving, but an AI tool's browsing pattern tripping a platform's defences against automated traffic, with the cost falling on an account holder.

• Reported Meta's Andy Stone said a Claude-linked tool was accessing profiles, posts and hashtags at roughly four times the normal rate in intense bursts, Bloomberg reported. Bloomberg, via Yahoo Finance
• Reported The coalition said the account was down for about 90 minutes, with administrators locked out until 5:33 p.m. New York time, Bloomberg reported. Bloomberg, via Yahoo Finance
• Reported Meta did not say which Claude tool it was, who ran it or what it was doing, TNW reported. TNW