The relation of meta to politics and political content has been a resource on their platforms great controversythe platform is regularly accused of highlighting material designed to confuse users with a badge name. The company in recent years tried to move away from its reputation and now allows users limit algorithmically suggested political content on both Threads and Instagram. Meta defines political content as “likely to mention governments, elections, or social issues that affect a group of people and/or society as a whole” — so pretty much anything, really. The company has confirmed that the option to restrict this narrow set of posts is now available to users with the setting automatically enabled by default. The Verge.
Meta first announced the feature in Februaryshared that the company wants “Instagram and Threads to be a great experience for everyone.” Statement continued, “If you choose to follow accounts with 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.” Basically, if you enable this feature, it will limit the visibility of political content through Discover. Reels, in-feed recommendations and suggested users. Political posts from accounts you follow should appear in your feed as usual.
You can check if the feature is enabled in your account or turn it off in Instagram settings. Just go to suggested content and you will see a tab called political content. Click on it and there will be two options: limit or don’t limit political content from accounts you don’t follow. However, choosing to limit it does not necessarily mean a total embargo. In the open footnote, “You may see less political or social themes in the content you offer.” Whichever you choose will apply to both Instagram and Threads.
