Instagram's algorithm blocked negative hashtags of Trump, but not Biden
A bug in Instagram's algorithm systemically shielded Donald Trump from negative hashtags without doing the same for rival Joe Biden, the company confirmed.
Posted — UpdatedAccording to an investigation from the Tech Transparency Project, since at least June, searches for Biden-related content returned hashtags with counter-messaging, while searches for Trump-related content did not return any hashtags at all. Instagram has since disabled its 'related hashtags' feature — which algorithmically suggests content relevant to a user's search — calling the discrepancy a "technical error."
Further investigation from Buzzfeed found that until recently, searching for #JoeBiden on Instagram would also return results for #trump2020landslide and #democratsdestroyamerica alongside pro-Biden messaging. Meanwhile, a similar search for #DonaldTrump did not return related hashtags.
Katie Paul, a director of the Tech Transparency Project, told Buzzfeed that the suppression of related hashtags "removes any possibility that negative hashtags could be associated with [Trump'] name or campaign slogans."
An Instagram spokesperson said that the bug — which also affected tens of thousands of nonpolitical hashtags — "appears to have impacted both parties." She noted that some pro-Trump tags, including #trumppence2020 and #votetrump, displayed related hashtags, whereas #democrats did not.
The tags #trumppence2020 and #votetrump are connected to 60,000 and 133,000 posts respectively, whereas #Trump — which did not display related hashtags — has more than 14 million posts.
Tim Murtaugh, the director of communications for the Trump campaign, denied the algorithm had a pro-Trump bias, and expressed unfounded claims that Silicon Valley companies are staffed by "the extreme left." The Biden campaign declined to comment.
Update: The headline on this story has been updated to clarify the effect of the bug.
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