No Kings Undermined by Big Tech
Lisa Gilbert & Robert Weissman / Public Citizen
(October 22, 2026) — “No Kings” was back in force this past weekend. With over 3,000 events nationwide, No Kings: Vote Early was the largest day of voter activation in American history.
But No Kings’ reach was undermined by the giant tech company owned by Facebook founder (and apparent Trump convert) Mark Zuckerberg.
Public Citizen just launched an investigation under the Freedom of Information Act to expose this potential interference in our democracy by Big Tech.
Here’s what you need to know:
- At approximately 1:30 p.m. EDT Saturday, the official No Kings page on Instagram was taken down — even as literally thousands of events were underway or about to begin all across America.
- The page was down for over 90 minutes, and organizers were locked out of the account for over four hours.
- This was done by Meta, the $1.8 trillion Big Tech behemoth that owns Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms.
- Meta’s CEO is Mark Zuckerberg, who is currently the sixth richest person on the planet * and who has (to put it mildly) been quite cozy with the regime since Donald Trump returned to power.
- Meta has gone through a variety of excuses — including blaming the incident on a confused AI model. (Yet Meta and other Big Tech giants keep pumping out ever more powerful “artificial intelligence” systems that they themselves do not understand and cannot control.)
The No Kings Coalition — which Public Citizen helps lead — has written a letter demanding answers from Zuckerberg.
Public Citizen is taking another step. We just launched an investigation under the Freedom of Information Act to demand any and all communications about this incident between Meta and Trump’s Department of Homeland Security.Here’s what one of us told the national media:
“Meta’s discordant response and lack of transparency are unacceptable. Our investigation into the communications between the administration and Meta, coupled with our No Kings Coalition letter demanding answers, are both designed to get to the bottom of these cagey rationales. The public deserves to understand why these actions occurred.”
Investigating and exposing corporate meddling in our democracy is just one part of the work Public Citizen has been doing since Trump returned to power. That includes 54 lawsuits (so far) against the administration and numerous investigations under the Freedom of Information Act.
If you’ve donated to Public Citizen before, thank you. If a donation is not right, we understand. Either way, thank you for being part of Public Citizen.
For democracy,
Lisa Gilbert & Robert Weissman, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen
* That’s according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires list. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: If there are so many billionaires whose fortunes are increasing so rapidly that there’s a “need” to track their wealth in real time, our priorities as a society may be out of whack.
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