Meta announced on Friday it would stop proactively recommending political content on Instagram or its upstart text-based app Threads, alarming news and politics-focused creators and journalists gearing up for a crucial election year.
While users will still be allowed to follow accounts that post about political and social issues, accounts posting such content will not be recommended and content posted by nonpolitical accounts that is political in nature or includes social commentary also won’t be recommended, Meta said.
The company said it also won’t show users posts focused on laws, elections or social issues from accounts those users don’t follow.
“This announcement expands on years of work on how we approach and treat political content based on what people have told us they wanted,” said Meta spokesperson Dani Lever.
Meta said users will still be able to see politics-related posts in their main feeds from accounts they follow. But the new approach means users are less likely to see politics-oriented content or accounts on Instagram’s “Explore” page, its short-form video product known as Reels, and the suggested-users-to-follow box. Meta also won’t be recommending politics to users’ feeds on Threads. Meta said it plans to develop tools to allow users to opt in to seeing more political content, but those tools are not available.