Instagram and Threads Will Stop Recommending Political Content (theverge.com) 19
In a blog post today, Meta announced that it'll stop showing political content across Instagram and Threads unless users explicitly choose to have it recommended to them. The Verge reports: Meta announced that it's expanding an existing Reels policy that limits political content from people you're not following (including posts about social issues) from appearing in recommended feeds to more broadly cover the company's Threads and Instagram platforms. "Our goal is to preserve the ability for people to choose to interact with political content, while respecting each person's appetite for it," said Instagram head Adam Mosseri, announcing on Threads that the changes will be applied over the next few weeks. Facebook is also expected to roll out these new controls at a later, undisclosed date.
Users who still want to have content "likely to mention governments, elections, or social topics that affect a group of people and/or society at large" recommended to them can choose to turn off this limitation within their account settings. The changes will apply to public accounts when enabled and only in places where content is being recommended, such as Explore, Reels, in-feed recommendations, and suggested users. The update won't change how users view content from accounts they choose to follow, so accounts that aren't eligible to be recommended can still post political content to their followers via their feed and Stories.
For creators, Meta says that "if your account is not eligible to be recommended, none of your content will be recommended regardless of whether or not all of your content goes against our recommendations guidelines." When these changes do go live, professional accounts on Instagram will be able to use the Account Status feature to check if posting political content is impacting their eligibility for recommendation. Professional accounts can also use Account Status to contest decisions that revoke this eligibility, alongside editing, removing, or pausing politically related posts until the account is eligible to be recommended again.
Users who still want to have content "likely to mention governments, elections, or social topics that affect a group of people and/or society at large" recommended to them can choose to turn off this limitation within their account settings. The changes will apply to public accounts when enabled and only in places where content is being recommended, such as Explore, Reels, in-feed recommendations, and suggested users. The update won't change how users view content from accounts they choose to follow, so accounts that aren't eligible to be recommended can still post political content to their followers via their feed and Stories.
For creators, Meta says that "if your account is not eligible to be recommended, none of your content will be recommended regardless of whether or not all of your content goes against our recommendations guidelines." When these changes do go live, professional accounts on Instagram will be able to use the Account Status feature to check if posting political content is impacting their eligibility for recommendation. Professional accounts can also use Account Status to contest decisions that revoke this eligibility, alongside editing, removing, or pausing politically related posts until the account is eligible to be recommended again.
The price of politics. (Score:1)
Setting the default setting to not show political ads, in an American Presidential election year? I see Meta caving and reversing this policy, by the end of this sentence. Fat chance they’re going to walk away from that kind of money.
Oh, and nothing like offering up a condom after you’ve already raped someone into a pregnancy expecting triplets. Talk about a too little too late gesture.
Re:The price of politics. (Score:4, Informative)
Oh they didn't say Ads. They said Posts.
We all know how politics goes on social media. It decends into extremely stupid nonsense very quick, conspiracy theories, bigotry, antivaxer gibberish etc. Its all very unfun nonsense that nobody wants to see shitting up their stream of cat videos and twerking influencers or whatever the hell the kids get into in 2024. Thats bad for business and makes advertisers nope the hell out.
But stupid political ads. Well yeah I'm pretty sure they'll take that money.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh they didn't say Ads. They said Posts.
Actually, they said political content “including posts”. I’d argue content includes ads but to your point that could be wordsmithing legal loophole fuckery. Hoping not.
Re: The price of politics. (Score:2, Informative)
The problem they are trying to fix is that there is literally nothing positive for one of the candidates. It is damage control for the President that was declared incompetent to stand trial by his own DOJ due to advanced age and dementia.
The policy will be reversed as soon as the election is over. Welcome to China, they too cannot speak about their President and the failed economy he brought.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem they are trying to fix is that there is literally nothing positive for one of the candidates. It is damage control for the President that was declared incompetent to stand trial by his own DOJ due to advanced age and dementia.
I love how banning political content from social media will cause the rest of us to somehow forget about Bidens problems. Biden is so bad off they couldn't put him on AM radio to try and speak. Damage control? The train derailed half a mile ago and we’re still doing 100. Good luck with that controlled response.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Biden's problems? You want some hamburders with that covfefe?
Biden may not go down as the best president in history, but he isn't the guy who started an insurrection to try to keep the office he lost in a landslide.
The tiny-fingered, cheeto-faced, ferret-wearing shitgibbon is a disqualified traitor who will be a convicted felon before November.
Only an idiot or a neo-nazi would vote for anybody but Biden this year.
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody's banning politics. They're just not going to insert it into people's feeds unless it's a post by someone they already follow.
Any political speech that is self-suppressed because there's no (or greatly-reduced) possibility for it to go viral is political speech we're all better off without in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
From what I read elsewhere, they will basically shadow-ban your content if you talk about the politics they don't like, even if you are subscribed to someone else's feed unless that someone opts in.
All speech is political in the end, my assumption is that certain types of things will not be considered politics and will be permitted (LGBT, climate apocalypse, ...)
Twitter (Score:1, Troll)
Meanwhile: Elon Musk has turned into a MAGA and Twitter is flooded with Trump adverts.
An improvement to social media ??? (Score:2)
But not on Fakebook itself. (Score:3)
A victory for legacy media (Score:3)
haha (Score:2)
Haha, well I have stopped recommending Instagram and Threads, so there.
And this will fix the Filter Bubble, how? (Score:2)
More echo-chamber sounds like a great idea to make the problem even worse.