A major policy change regarding the visibility of political content on Instagram and Threads has been announced by Meta, formerly known as Facebook. Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri announced on Friday that the company will no longer actively promote political content to users by default in a Threads post.
Meta adds new feature for political content
Users will still see political posts from accounts they follow, Mosseri clarified, but the apps will no longer “proactively amplify” such content. Scheduled to go live “in the next few weeks,” this change will affect public accounts where algorithm usually suggests content. In particular, proactive recommendations on platforms such as Instagram’s Reels and Explore, and suggested users on Threads, will no longer include political content.
“In the next few weeks, we will be enhancing our methods to avoid recommending political content on surfaces like Explore, Reels, and Suggested Users across both Instagram and Threads,” stated Mosseri.
A new control feature has been added by Meta to accommodate users who want to keep watching political content on these platforms. By going to the Suggested content tab and choosing Political content, users can use this feature. From there, users can select ‘Don’t Limit’ or ‘Limit’ according to their preferences. Facebook will get this control functionality at a later time, Meta confirmed
Additionally, Meta revealed that Professional Instagram accounts will be able to keep an eye on whether they qualify for content recommendations based on recent political posts. These users can review and edit recent posts using the Account Status feature, request a review if they disagree with Meta’s decision, or temporarily stop posting political content in order to be recommended again.
