Did you leave X to go to Threads to run away from all of the political content? Did you notice that Politics Twitter has now made its way over to Threads — just like every other community from Twitter? Well, Meta has seemed to notice it, too.
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has previously said that the company did not plan to turn Threads into a place where politics and news dominated our newsfeeds, and Meta is really leaning into that. In a blog post, the company announced that it will not promote political content on Instagram or Threads.
The company says that it will limit political content through its recommendation algorithm for a number of areas across its apps, including Explore, Reels, In-Feed Recommendations, and Suggested Users:
These recommendations updates apply to public accounts and in places where we recommend content such as Explore, Reels, In-Feed Recommendations and Suggested Users – it doesn’t change how we show people content from accounts they choose to follow. If political content – potentially related to things like laws, elections, or social topics – 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.
Professional accounts on Instagram will be able to use Account Status to check their eligibility to be recommended based on whether they recently posted political content. From Account Status, they can edit or remove recent posts, request a review if they disagree with our decision, or stop posting this type of content for a period of time, in order to be eligible to be recommended again.
While political content will be limited by default, users will still be able to turn that feature off and allow all of the political content they want. The company says that this will be rolling out to Instagram and Threads first, with Facebook to come “at a later date.”
Of course, this limiting of political content will only apply to content that is being recommended from accounts you don’t follow. If you follow someone and they post something political, you’ll still see that content.
