Instagram insists 'bug' that negatively affected Joe Biden was 'not partisan'
Look, just because a so-called Instagram "bug" benefits President Donald Trump and hurts Democratic nominee and political rival Joe Biden does not mean it's partisan. And, if you dare to suggest otherwise, then get ready for Instagram to jump down your throat.
At issue is Instagram's "related hashtags" feature which shows hashtags supposedly related to whatever hashtag a user has clicked on. However, as the Tech Transparency Project — a research initiative of the nonprofit Campaign for Accountability — reported Wednesday, Instagram was populating Joe Biden's related hashtags page with positive, neutral, and (critically) negative hashtags, while no hashtags of any kind were on Trump's page.
In other words, clicking on #joebiden might present you with #sleepyjoe, but, because of the bug, clicking on #donaldtrump would present you with no other hashtags. It's pretty wild. As the two screenshots captured by the Tech Transparency Project below show, this in effect served up negative content for one presidential candidate and not the other.
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In its defense, Instagram chalked this up to a "bug," and got more than a little testy when BuzzFeed News Senior Reporter Ryan Mac tweeted a story about the discrepancy.
"This isn't about politics," wrote an Instagram spokesperson in response to Mac. "Tens of thousands of hashtags were affected, and your story cherry-picked a handful of those thousands to fit a sensational narrative. The bug was also not partisan, as you note #democrats was impacted."
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Indeed, as the Tech Transparency Project noted, it was not just the #donaldtrump hashtag that was affected.
"Instagram blocked the display of related hashtags on all 10 of the Trump hashtags reviewed, including #donaldtrump, #trump and #trump2020," the Tech Transparency Project determined. "That means users were not directed to other content, including anything negative or critical about the president."
Similar Biden hashtags reportedly did direct users to negative information.
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"A technical error caused a number of hashtags to not show related hashtags," Instagram confirmed to BuzzFeed News. "We've disabled this feature while we investigate."
To be clear, there is no reason to doubt that this was indeed some accident of code quietly lurking in the background. Even so, as this bug shows, a thing does not need to have intentionality behind it to do real harm.
