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Users Shocked To Find Instagram Limits Political Content By Default (arstechnica.com) 58

Posted by BeauHD from the thanks-for-the-heads-up dept.
Instagram has been limiting recommended political content by default without notifying users. Ars Technica reports: Instead, Instagram rolled out the change in February, announcing in a blog that the platform doesn't "want to proactively recommend political content from accounts you don't follow." That post confirmed that Meta "won't proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads," so that those platforms can remain "a great experience for everyone." "This change does not impact posts from accounts people choose to follow; it impacts what the system recommends, and people can control if they want more," Meta's spokesperson Dani Lever told Ars. "We have been working for years to show people less political content based on what they told us they want, and what posts they told us are political."

To change the setting, users can navigate to Instagram's menu for "settings and activity" in their profiles, where they can update their "content preferences." On this menu, "political content" is the last item under a list of "suggested content" controls that allow users to set preferences for what content is recommended in their feeds. There are currently two options for controlling what political content users see. Choosing "don't limit" means "you might see more political or social topics in your suggested content," the app says. By default, all users are set to "limit," which means "you might see less political or social topics." "This affects suggestions in Explore, Reels, Feed, Recommendations, and Suggested Users," Instagram's settings menu explains. "It does not affect content from accounts you follow. This setting also applies to Threads." "Did [y'all] know Instagram was actively limiting the reach of political content like this?!" an X user named Olayemi Olurin wrote in an X post. "I had no idea 'til I saw this comment and I checked my settings and sho nuff political content was limited."

"This is actually kinda wild that Instagram defaults everyone to this," another user wrote. "Obviously political content is toxic but during an election season it's a little weird to just hide it from everyone?"
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Users Shocked To Find Instagram Limits Political Content By Default More

Users Shocked To Find Instagram Limits Political Content By Default

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  • If you want it, opt in (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 22, 2024 @08:47PM (#64337789)

    I don't see the problem. Someone explain the problem here.

    • To play devil's advocate, why doesn't it ask me to opt in to other content? Did I have to agree to see sports content, or pictures of cute puppies before being shown either of those? The mere act of requiring users to opt in to certain classifications (which are ultimately determined by the platform) of content is something that ought to give pause for concern.

      But now that I've removed the horns I'm perfectly fine with this. If I want someone to piss on my face, I think that's an experience I should have

      • This is an area where some extra transparency would be excellent because I don't feel many would have an issue with this so long as it's all done equally. No political means no political.

        This is definitely one of those things where on principle you are 100% right its involuntary restriction but person to person, we get it and this makes sense. Political messaging borders on pornography sometimes, maybe we should treat it as such.

        • With the then impending legislation banning TikTok in the USA, Meta probably read the writing on the wall that they'd be able to finally control political conversation on their platforms without government intervention or competition from TikTok. Sure there's still Twitter, Mastodon, and a few others, but TikTok was Instagram and Facebooks' most major competitor.

          • I wouldn't be surprised if the TikTok ban bill dies in the Senate. Unlike the SCOTUS (I'm referring specifically to when it was leaked that RvW was likely to be overturned, with resulting public protests), the representatives in the Senate are directly accountable to the voters and pissing off the electorate by banning their favorite social media platform is at their own peril the next time their seats are up.

            • That only applies if they've managed to anger a large enough percentage of those of their constituants who actually bother to vote and it's not too long until they're up for re-election. If most of the voters in their state are middle-aged or older and the senator is in the second year of a six year term, they're not going to take upsetting the voters into account.
        • There are some who would make the claim that everything is political. I think it's a bit like pornography in that you can't really define it, but you certainly know it when you see it. Suppose you could nail down a definition and pick one that no one objects to though. Even as soon as you make a set of rules that everyone can agree upon, someone will find a way to subvert them, creating and endless game of cat and mouse.

          I don't really care what they do. I don't use their service and at the end of the day

          • Absolutely, especially today there are many for whom just everything is political but knowing that if it's me I am setting the filter on this pretty high, especially this year with not too much regard for false positives getting swept up.

      • Re:If you want it, opt in (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Friday March 22, 2024 @09:21PM (#64337857) Homepage

        It's like how pineapple should always be an opt-in pizza topping. If it's not something you're into, it ruins the whole damn pizza. Okay maybe that wasn't really the best analogy and I'm just hungry.

        Seriously though, it's pretty common on most message forums unrelated to politics to ban political discussion because it frequently ends up derailing discussions and causing people to fling personal insults at each other. If X separated the politics from everything else, I'd probably have a reason to actually use the service. As it stands, it's mostly just people constantly arguing politics, with you-know-who fanning the flames.

        • Work for me.

          I suppose that some people want to see the random political bilge from accounts they don't follow, but those people can opt in.

        • In the interest of fairness to all pizza toppings, you should be forced to opt out of all the ones you don't want. By default, pizzas should come with every topping possible. Don't want goat on your pizza? Opt out. Don't want caterpillars on your pizza? Opt out. It's really not that hard.
        • ...it's mostly just people constantly arguing politics, with you-know-who fanning the flames.

          With the identity of you-know-who varying depending on the political opinions of the reader.

      • Re:If you want it, opt in (Score:4, Insightful)

        by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Friday March 22, 2024 @09:33PM (#64337877)
        If you're not smart enough to know how to opt in, or that you have to, you should stay out of politics anyway.

      • I would guess its because political content on the feed negatively impacts advertising performance.

      • ... ought to give pause ...

        Not a problem: We'll send you the US Politics, Sex Education For Dummies and Naughty Latvian Schoolgirls feeds, starting now: After all, we wouldn't want to censor your experience by default.

        I don't see this as a censorship problem, I see this as a dont-feed-the-trolls problem.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by detritus. ( 46421 )

      Instagram should define "politics" is. Politics, in its broadest sense, encompasses the distribution of power and resources within a society, the relationships among individuals and groups, and the processes by which decisions are made in public and private spheres. From this perspective, many aspects of life can be seen as political because they involve power dynamics, social negotiations, and collective decision-making. How does that translate into an algorithm? Certain areas, such as science, educati

      • There should be complete transparency in the algorithm that defines what politics is

        Politics is stuff that annoys users, such that they'd want to be opted out of it by default.
        >>"We have been working for years to show people less political content based on what they told us they want, and what posts they told us are political."

        There's no way they give a shit about the technical definition of "political", it's going to be either "annoys users" or "annoys owner/shareholders/advertisers"

        I'm sure that specific code involved is a mess of constantly changing contradictory spaghetti that on

      • One thing you left out: to a Marxist, everything is political.
    • I think the problem is how they define political contents. While I'm also fine with removing all those toxic political hate speech, it seems that Meta is also limiting many scientific topic especially those that have been somewhat weaponized by politicians like climate change, health care, etc. This is causing issues with many legit science communicators on the platforms.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The only problem I can see is that this was a reaction to the large amount of support for Palestinians on the platform. In other words, Instagram is covering for genocide by minimizing messages that are trying to bring attention to it.

      • In other words, Instagram is covering for genocide by minimizing messages that are trying to bring attention to it.

        You mean that Instagram is trying to cover up genocide by Palestinians who are trying to drive the Jews into the sea?

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Whenever I see claims that Palestinians/Hamas are trying to commit genocide or do another holocaust, I like to ask if the person making the claim thinks that there is any serious risk of it actually happening. Considering it took Hamas years to plan the October 7th attack, it seems unlikely that they could be imminently about to murder millions of Israelis.

          I'd also like to know if you think a two state solution is viable, and if not what the outcome should be. Personally I think this is the end for Israel.

          • That's a good question and deserves an honest answer. No, I don't think that the Palestinians/Hamas are ever going to manage to pull off an act of genocide, but I also don't think that allowing them to continue to try, with all of the death and destruction that that would entail over time is a good idea.

            As to your second question, I think that a two state solution might be viable if and only if the Palestinian state were led by a more moderate group with a live and let live attitude and Hamas were banned

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              I doubt that Palestinians would be interested in further conflict if Israel left their occupied lands and locked up the settler terrorists.

              There is strong support for more moderate politicians in Gaza, which is why Israel kidnapped them. Netanyahu needs Hamas to justify the genocide and annexation of everything from the river to the sea.

              • Do you have any objective evidence for any of your anti-Israel claims or are you just spouting pro-Arabic propaganda? In any event, [citation needed].

      • Instagram was never meant to be a place to share things like news. I know people will always find a way to share information, but if I owned Instagram I would do exactly this. Instagram is for fake happiness. That is exactly how it's used and likely how it was intended to be used. If you want news go somewhere else.

        Alternatively, if you do not want news, go to Instagram.

  • I'm not interested in some internet rando's politics, at all.

  • Da, comrade. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kernel Kurtz ( 182424 ) on Friday March 22, 2024 @09:00PM (#64337829)

    "Did [y'all] know Instagram was actively limiting the reach of political content like this?!" an X user named Olayemi Olurin wrote in an X post. "I had no idea 'til I saw this comment and I checked my settings and sho nuff political content was limited."

    Vladimirovich and Winnie will be sad!

  • I'm impressed! (Score:3)

    by evanh ( 627108 ) on Friday March 22, 2024 @09:08PM (#64337841)

    Zuck doing something good for a change. Now just need to also default to an opt-in system for everything else too. Particularly sharing of tracking info.

    • Yeah honestly, social media and politics are a horrible combination and seem to bring out the worst, pettiest nastiest impulses in people. I know most of us older cats (which I tend to assume is slashdots core audience, lets face it, this site is pretty ancient by internet standards) where around in that era when we thought a completely free internet where everyone stands around politely debating the topics would lead to an enlightened populus that keeps power in check and ushers in some sort of great utopi

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Temkin ( 112574 )

        a completely free internet where everyone stands around politely debating the topics

        And therein lies the problem. The generation behind us has no ability to debate. They got participation trophies, and have trigger warnings, and basically never got told "no". They don't have the social skills to deal with the Internet as we created it... Let alone cope with having two disparate thoughts or concepts in their heads at the same time.

  • Did [y'all] know? (Score:3)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Friday March 22, 2024 @09:13PM (#64337849)

    "Did [y'all] know Instagram was actively limiting the reach of political content like this?!" an X user named Olayemi Olurin wrote in an X post.

    Twitter is actively suspending accounts [wired.com] mentioning neo-nazi Hans Kristian Graebener, aka StoneToss?

    • In a previous life Musk could have been Joseph Goebbels secretary.

      • Ever see the music video for Weird Al's song "White and Nerdy"? That's basically Elon Musk trying to suck up to the right wing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        In a previous life Musk could have been Joseph Goebbels secretary.

        Or his Chief Eunuch... I'm channelling a bit of Red Dwarf today.

    • Let's see, does LibsOfTikTok still have an X account? Yup, they do. So, on X it's okay to deanonymize leftists but not Neo-Nazis? Considering Musk's self-proclaimed belief that the Overton window has slid towards the left (in a country that doesn't even have socialized healthcare *eye roll*), that checks out.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Whibla ( 210729 )

        Considering Musk's self-proclaimed belief that the Overton window has slid towards the left (in a country that doesn't even have socialized healthcare *eye roll*), that checks out.

        I'd say that, based on this statement, it's pretty clear that treating politics, economics, and 'socialisation' as all existing on the same unitless 1 dimensional scale is one of the reasons why 'right' and 'left' spend so much time talking passed each other, seemingly unable to even understand what the other is actually concerned about.

        I mean, let's be honest, to a large degree the Overton window has slid to the 'left', when it comes to liberalisation of social mores. Economically however it vanished off t

  • Users of a free internet service either are dumb as a post, or live under a rock, if ANYTHING said service provider does even mildly surprises them - never mind "shocking" them.

  • What if I told you that slashdot limits political content by default?

    You'd know I was full of shit and/or didn't know what I was talking about.

  • That explains why Instagram is so much better than Twitter.

    I am shocked though. Shocked that a social media company seems to have figured this out. I wonder if Instagram, which is a photo site, did this originally to keep spam under control and Facebook eventually discovered it and, after getting interrogated by the US congress, decided it might be worth implementing company wide.

  • ... good? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RandomUsername99 ( 574692 ) on Friday March 22, 2024 @10:16PM (#64337943)
    Why the fuck would I care what anybody on Instagram thinks about politics.
  • "influencers" show off overpriced clothing made in sweat shops for people (women mostly) to buy. That's where all the money's made over there. So I'm not surprised political content is blocked by default. It's the easiest way to keep it from overwhelming the money making stuff.
  • He did spend $500M to sway voters
  • Gosh, Batman, are people out there still ussing Insta,etc? Nobody here is!

    • In the real world, yes. A couple of weeks ago, a millennial woman at a bar didn't offer her phone number but instead we exchanged Instagram. Young people using technology filter out the serial killers. ... I've never once been asked to exchange Fediverses.

  • About a week ago, I spontaneously embroidered this slogan onto my jean jacket- "The Revolution Will Not Be Instagrammed." It was an update and homage to Gil Scott Heron's song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."

    There are many levels to my inspiration, but largely it is a commentary on how so many people have abandoned the traditional media for this candy-coated illusion of being "informed." It's really weird for me to now see this confirmation of my suspicion. Opiate of the masses, indeed.
  • you have the right to sprout shit but not make every one see it , I don't have to view to it and the default option is correct option is off ie I have to exercise my right to choose to see your bullshit.

  • "Obviously political content is toxic but during an election season it's a little weird to just hide it from everyone?"

    So it's "toxic", but you want some of it ... presumably your favorite flavor.

  • They basically allowed anything including de facto porn. That was their cool factor. Now, they don't have that because of neoliberal puritanical conservatism. And TikTok is even more oppressive. I don't think people these days understand freedom of expression or what's actually cool.

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