Is politics a major buzzkill? Instagram execs seem to think so.
In a blog post Friday, Instagram, the popular photo and video app owned by Meta, said it will no longer “proactively recommend” political content from accounts that users do not already follow. The same policy applies to Threads, the Twitter-copycat app launched last summer under the Instagram brand.
“We want Instagram and Threads to be a great experience for everyone,” it said. “If you decide to follow accounts that post political content, we don’t want to get between you and their posts, but we also don’t want to proactively recommend political content from accounts you don’t follow.”
By default, going forward Instagram and Threads will not promote political content (unless it’s from accounts users already are following). Both apps will add a setting to let users who still want to see political content recommendations opt to do so — and, according the post, the same control will roll out on Facebook at a later date. Instagram defines “political content” as “potentially related to things like laws, elections or social topics.”
This is a good step forward, assuming that the algorithm is good at determining what counts as political content. However I’m not sure how effective this will be when users still have the ability to opt back in to political recommendations.
As much as I hate Facebook. Allowing users to opt back in is the right move. Reddit would’ve forced it onto everyone.
Sam. Facebook is of course horrible and has been a net loss for humankind, but Reddit and Elron Musk have managed to demonstrate that things could be even worse.
I’m sure the algorithm will do a passable but terrible job, like their AI moderation. The problem I see is it gives them further excuses about censoring certain topics from people’s feed, while allowing through the political speech they want people to see.