Instagram and Threads will stop recommending political content from accounts that the user doesn’t follow. This applies to the Explore section, Reels, in-feed recommendations, and suggested users. Meta, the company that owns the two networks, says that the change does not affect the accounts that the user follows, and that there is an option to see recommendations of this type again.
The company already had such a policy for Reels, but now it will be expanded to more areas of the two networks. Meta’s concept of political content is quite broad, including posts involving laws, elections, and social issues. The news is also on Instagram’s blog and Meta’s transparency page.
Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, announced the changes to Threads. “We don’t want to proactively amplify political content from accounts you don’t follow,” he said. “Our goal is to preserve the option to interact with political content, respecting each person’s interest.”
User can re-enable policy recommendations
Meta offers you the option to disable this restriction in your account settings. Thus, the user will once again see recommendations for content that “likely mentions governments, elections, or social issues that affect groups of people or society as a whole.”
Professional accounts on Instagram will be able to check if they’re eligible to have their content recommended, based on what they’ve recently posted. To do this, you need to go to the “Account Status” area. There, you can edit and remove posts or even request a review.
Meta does not recommend political content on Facebook
Meta’s move to decrease recommendations for political content on Instagram and Threads follows what the company has adopted on Facebook. Since 2022, the company has made changes to the feed to reduce the distribution of posts of this type.
Mosseri has also said that Threads would be different from X (formerly Twitter) and would not encourage news and political discussion. For him, the goal of the new network was to be a “less angry” place for conversations. In addition, the executive considers that journalism and political affairs bring scrutiny, negativity and integrity risks, which are not worth it.
