Itās been nearly a year since Instagram and Threads defaulted toĀ blocking recommendations of āpoliticalā contentĀ from accounts you donāt already follow, butĀ now Instagram boss Adam Mosseri says, āā¦weāre going to be adding political content to recommendationsā on both platforms.
Thatās a sharp turn fromĀ his statements in 2023laying out the goal of a āless angry place for conversationsā that wouldnāt do anything to encourage politics or hard news. However, under Metaās new approach to moderation ā and new rules aboutĀ what users can say on its platformsā that goal is going out the window just as the Trump administration prepares to take over.
Until now, users have had to opt-in to seeing recommendations of content deemed political, but the change rolling out this week in the US and to the rest of the world next week will turn on the recommendations and a content control setting available with options for less, standard (the default setting), and more.
In a series of Threads posts, MosseriĀ reiterated, āIāve maintained very publicly and for a long time that it not our place to show people political content from accounts they donāt follow,ā and that āitās proven impractical to draw a red line around what is and is not political content.ā
In aĀ video on Instagram,Ā he said that the push for political content ā particularly from users on Threads ā is āby the way, very different from the feedback we were getting only a few years ago about people feeling that they were overly exposed to political content on our platforms.ā Of course, according to theĀ Wall Street Journal, that was before Mark Zuckerberg experienced the effects of filters cutting down the reach of his post about recovering from a torn ACL and before Metaās new and friendlier-to-Trump policy chief took over.
Wonder if theyāll be recommending content from all sides of the political spectrum, or just the right-wing contentā¦
Iām afraid we may already knowā¦
Itās sqewed in favor of the right, with non-right leaning comments being hidden in favor of those that call all LGBTQ+ people pedophiles (this predated the whole community guideline change fiasco, and was this since progressives started to hate GenAI), and in some countries, you barely get any leftist content, all while the right is being forced upon you.
Could it also be that the opinions youāve mentioned, the ārightā, are the majority, and they had been disproportionally silenced in favor of giving megaphones to the minority?
I could go both ways on this and itās very hard to see, but Iām not in favor of disproportionally silencing or promoting any agenda or voice