#Sikh Was Being Blocked by Facebook And Instagram For Months; They Say it Was a Mistake

In a rather shocking development, Facebook has admitted that the #sikh hashtag was being blocked on Facebook as well as Instagram since March. They only became of it a few hours ago, apparently, and they say it is a mistake caused by a report in early March. They say community feedback made them aware of the #sikh hashtag block on both social networks on Wednesday and have since unblocked the hashtag. Facebook and Instagram have apologized for the #sikh hashtag being blocked on the social networks. Facebook says #sikh hashtag was first blocked on Facebook and Instagram on March 7, following a report that was inaccurately reviewed by their teams.

“We became aware that these hashtags were blocked today following feedback we received from the community, and quickly moved to unblock them. Our processes fell down here, and we’re sorry,” says Instagram in an early morning statement released on Twitter. “This is an incredibly important, painful time for the Sikh community. We designed hashtags to allow people to come together and share with one another. It's never our intention to silence the voices of this community, we are taking the necessary steps so this doesn’t happen again,” they add.

Users had been pointing out for a while now that the #sikh hashtag search on Instagram had been throwing up error messages instead. The outrage on social media was certainly to be expected particularly from the Sikh community around the world, considering religious sentiments have been hurt. “Posts for this hashtag are temporarily hidden because of unusual activity that may not meet Instagram’s Community Guidelines”, it read. The Sikh Press Association had raised this issue with the social networks. In a tweet, they said, “Why has Instagram blocked the hashtag #Sikh @instagram @mosseri? In the same week that #Neverforget1984 trends on Twitter, Instagram seemingly conspires to suppress the truth about the atrocities of the 1984 Sikh genocide by censoring the faith of 27 million people.”

This isn’t the first time, just this week, that Instagram has been on the wrong side of things with hashtag monitoring. Earlier this week, users had reported that they were unable to post or view #BlackLivesMatter hashtag content, something that Instagram admitted happened because of incorrect spam detection.