Creators Frustrated as Instagram Limits Reach of Political Content
By Movieguide® Contributor
After Meta decided to limit the reach of political content, Instagram creators are urging their followers to change their settings so they can still see political posts.
“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. So we’re extending our existing approach to how we treat political content – we won’t proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads. If you still want these posts recommended to you, you will have a control to see them,” Meta announced.
Instagram began automatically turning these limits on for users, and many creators took to their platform to provide a step-by-step process for adjusting those settings.
“You can’t just essentially put a blindfold on people who may not realize it. A lot of people don’t even know that this is a thing that’s been applied to their preferences,” creator Johanna Toruño said, per NBC News. “It’s just so appalling to me to do something like this at such a political moment in our lives, not just internationally, but also within our country, with this being an election year.”
This move from Meta is no surprise. Since the creation of Threads, a text-based app, Meta has been open about limiting the amount of political content on the app.
Dani Lever, public affairs director at Meta, wrote, “This announcement expands on years of work on how we approach and treat political content based on what people have told us they wanted. And now, people are going to be able to control whether they would like to have these types of posts recommended to them.”
Instagram head Adam Mosseri added, “Politics and hard news are important, I don’t want to imply otherwise. But my take is, from a platform’s perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let’s be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.”
“These recommendations updates apply to public accounts and only in places where we recommend content,” Mosseri continued. “They don’t change how we show people content from accounts they choose to follow. If political content is posted by an account that is not eligible to be recommended, that account’s content can still reach their followers in Feed and Stories.”
Movieguide® previously reported on Meta’s approach to politics ahead of the 2024 presidential election:
To avoid controversy, Meta has stepped back from politics, a move that has already had major implications for the upcoming presidential election.
Meta inserted itself into the 2016 and 2020 presidential races, portraying itself as a forum for democracy. However, with the higher rates of polarization across the country, Meta now wants out of politics and is taking strong measures to make its platforms less lucrative for the candidates.
Following the 2020 election, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg said the company plans to “turn down the temperature” on political speech.
“Politics has kind of had a way of creeping into everything,” Zuckerburg said in early 2021. “The feedback that we see from our community is that people don’t want that in their experience.”
Earlier this year, Adam Moseri announced, “Over the next few weeks we will be improving how we avoid recommending content about politics on recommendation surfaces – like Explore, Reels, and Suggested Users – across both Instagram and Threads. If you want political recommendations, you will have a control to opt into getting them.”
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