Instagram, the popular social media app owned by meta, said it will stop “proactively recommending” political content from accounts that user do not already follow. Similar policy will be applied to Threads, app similar to Twitter launched last year under Instagram’s branding.
“We want Instagram and Threads to be a great experience for everyone,” said Instagram in a blog post.
“If you decide to follow accounts that post political content, we don’t want to get between you and their posts, but we also don’t want to proactively recommend political content from accounts you don’t follow.”
By its default the app will not promote political content. Both Instagram and threads will add a setting to let user decide that if they want the apps to recommend political content or not. And similar changes will be rolled out for Facebook later.
Instagram defines “political content” as “potentially related to things like laws, elections or social topics.”
Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted on Threads “Our goal is to preserve the ability for people to choose to interact with political content, while respecting each person’s appetite for it”.
The policy updates for political recommendations will cover Reels, Explore, In-feed recommendations and suggested users on the apps interface.
The parent company Meta is already deprioritizing political content across its social media platforms including Facebook “People have told us they want to see less political content, so we have spent the last few years refining our approach on Facebook to reduce the amount of political content — including from politicians’ accounts — you see in Feed, Reels, Watch, Groups You Should Join, and Pages You May Like,” the company posted on its transparency Centre site.
Instagram noted that the professional accounts on the app can check the account status setting to see if their shared content is eligible to be recommended based on whether they recently posted a piece of content that can be called as “political content”.
If insta blocks an account’s posts from recommendations, users may request if they do not agree with the apps decision or could edit or remove the recent posts to regain eligibility.
Flagged users who share political content can also stop sharing political content from their accounts for the time being, in order to attain the eligibility for recommendation again, said Instagram.
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