After three months of daily anti-government protests - dubbed the Flamingo Revolution - the sudden mass suspension of Instagram accounts has led to fears of brigading against demonstrators.
"What happened in Albania is tantamount to censorship," said MEP Alexandra Geese in a statement . She is one of more than 30 Members of the European Parliament who signed a letter asking the European Commission to investigate whether Meta's actions complied with the EU's Digital Services Act .
" Mark Zuckerberg's understanding of 'freedom of speech' only seems to cover opinions that align with the political agenda of the Trump administration. This is precisely why we have European rules," she added.
An NGO group investigating the Meta suspensions alleges to WIRED it has evidence that "strongly indicates coordinated activity" led to the complaints.
"What quickly distinguished this from ordinary content moderation was the concentration of cases around the same political and civic movement," said Martha Dimitratou, founder of Repro Uncensored, a nonprofit organization that tracks digital censorship. In at least one case, the complaint was traced to someone who claimed they had been paid to make the complaint.
Dimitratou told WIRED they had verified around 100 cases of account restrictions connected to protests. "We continue to receive additional reports and, based on the volume and patterns we are seeing, estimate that the true number could be several hundred," she says.
"Collectively, the targeted accounts reach millions of people, meaning that when they are restricted or removed, millions can lose access to news, political information, protest documentation, and civic voices they rely on," Dimitratou says.
One protester told WIRED that the person reporting his account said they had been paid to conduct the attack. On August 20, Arjan Koçi began receiving an influx of emails from Meta. "Someone was claiming that I had taken their work and published it as mine. But it was my video, my voice, my picture," says Koçi, a British-Albanian who had been documenting the protest on his Instagram account since June.
Koçi's aerial drone footage showed the massive scale of the demonstrations in Tirana and got millions of views across platforms. "If you receive too many of these reports, Meta will restrict your account," he told WIRED. Around the same time, he said, several other protesters were also facing similar reports against their accounts. "It was about 1 o'clock in the morning, and I know at least 20 accounts that were closed at the same time," he said.
Five of the reports made against Koçi's content came from the same source with the same email address. He decided to reach out to the complainant. "I told him, 'You have made a mistake; you are claiming my work as yours. Why are you doing this?'"
To his surprise, Koçi received a response. "He asked for my contact and then texted me." The person told Koçi that he had been paid $1,800 to report these accounts and would withdraw his complaints if Koçi paid him. "He said he would accept crypto as payment."
When Koçi refused, the person shared a piece of advice: "If you want to keep your account safe, deactivate it for a week." Further attempts to contact the alleged attacker were met with silence. They did not respond to WIRED's attempts to contact them.
"The fundamental vulnerability is that a bad actor does not need to hack an account or directly prevent someone from publishing. They can weaponize the platform's own enforcement infrastructure by falsely claiming ownership of material and repeatedly reporting," Dimitratou said.
A Meta spokesperson told WIRED that the accounts were removed in error and have been restored, without commenting on the investigation. "We're sorry for the inconvenience caused. We have an appeals process for people to use when they think we've made a mistake, so we can restore content if we determine it doesn't violate."
The source of attacks remains unclear. Koci and others have accused the Albanian government of orchestrating attacks. "They want to close the protest down because this protest is one of the biggest protests in 35 years," he said.
Albanian prime minister Edi Rama has rejected the accusations. "We have nothing whatsoever to do with any social media account being disabled or restricted, nor do we possess the technical capability to carry out an operation of this kind. Shame on this whole bunch of failures for spreading such nonsense," he said on X . The prime minister's office did not respond to WIRED's request for comment.
Reporting synthesized and verified under Nexvoro.tech editorial guidelines. Full primary records referenced via Wired.
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