Instagram and Threads to stop recommending political content and creators by default

Some of Mark Zuckerberg's Meta products will default to not recommending political content or political pages in hopes of fostering a "great experience" for their users.

Instagram and Threads, Meta's competitor to Elon Musk's X, announced that they would reduce the default amount of new political content to users to exactly zero. Any content from accounts deemed to be political that a user does not already follow will not be suggested or placed in recommended sections.

"We want Instagram and Threads to be a great experience for everyone. 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," Instagram wrote in a press release.

The platforms won’t push such content on "recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads," but users will be able to opt in to seeing the suggested materials.

The press release attached an image that showed Instagram's settings, where "political content" is set to "limit" by default, with the option to select "don't limit."

Political content is likely to mention "governments, elections, or social topics that affect a group of people and/or society at large," the platform described.

This public display of cutting off growth of political channels included hiding them from recommended content streams such as the explore page, short-form videos known as Reels, and recommendations on the user's feed, as well as preventing any new political channels from appearing in one's Suggested Users section.

"It doesn’t change how we show people content from accounts they choose to follow," the platform justified. "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."

Instagram then suggested that users could delete any recently posted political content in order to be eligible for recommendations once again.

As founder Zuckerberg continues to move away from politics on his platforms and toward augmented reality, the company has seen record revenue.

During the fourth quarter of 2023, Meta made an impressive $40.1 billion, a quarterly revenue record. This as Zuckerberg has endured heavy accusations from federal authorities over alleged child abuse and exploitation through the use of Meta's platforms.

Zuckerberg took verbal beatings in a recent hearing from senators like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, who questioned him on the basis of the alleged scandals.

In addition, 2023 saw Meta begin to block news and political content on their platforms in Canada. The Canadian government ruled that Meta needed to pay news companies for bringing content to the apps, to which Meta quickly responded by disabling such content in the country.

The company's latest move is sure to push political creators further away from the apps should they hope to garner income from their productions.

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