Meta executives have been saying for some time that they don't want to increase political posts on their apps. Now, an opt-out setting that limits recommendations for “political content” has been added to Instagram and Threads.
You can find it in your account settings “Content Preferences” on Instagram. From there, the “Limit political content from people you don't follow” option is enabled by default. The setting also applies to Threads, since that app shares its account system with Instagram.
Meta has framed this new setting as good for user choice, and the company says it doesn't limit the scope of political content from the accounts people choose to follow. Although the change was first announced in early Februaryconfirmed Meta spokesperson Andy Stone. The edge which began rolling out widely last week. As of Monday, the company has not sent out any in-app notifications alerting people to the setting and the fact that it is turned on by default.
If you talk to people on Meta about why they've become displeased with recommending politics, you'll usually hear that they think most people don't want to see it on their feeds. However, last year, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri was more direct about the company's motivation in a conversation with me on Threads.
“Politics and hard news are important, I don't want to imply otherwise,” he said. he said at that time. “But my opinion is that, from a platform's perspective, any engagement or incremental revenue they can generate is absolutely not worth the scrutiny, negativity (let's be honest), or integrity risks that come with it.”
So, there you have it: Meta doesn't want the blowback that comes from its role in actively surfacing political content, which is defined as publications about “governments”, “elections” and “social issues”, an ambiguous term that is probably intended to give a lot of room for maneuver on what can be included in this policy. If you don't want Meta to make these calls about what it recommends, it's time to change your settings.
