Meta announced it will cease recommending political content on Instagram or Threads ahead of the 2024 election.
The move is similar to how Facebook restricted political content on Facebook over the last few years, mainly Conservative sites.
In a statement, Meta said:
“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 politicians’ accounts- you see in the feed.”
“We’ve recently extended this approach in Reels, Explore, and In-Feed Recommendations on Instagram and Threads, too,” the statement added.
The statement also noted they “are preserving your ability to find and interact with political content that’s meaningful to you if that’s what you’re interested in on Facebook Feed” using artificial intelligence.
“We’ve shifted away from ranking political content in Facebook Feed based on engagement signals,” it added.
The Post Millennial reported:
“The company also revealed on the Instagram website that they would be allowing users to select if they still want to see political content or not, and that “control will also roll out on Facebook at a later date.”
The Threads platform was launched last year after Elon Musk vowed to make X a free speech platform and go head-to-head with Meta.
However, some left-leaning political commentators like Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz complained of political censorship on the platform.
Lorenz claimed the harm of the policy “is not primarily to political campaigns and newsrooms, but instead marginalized groups.”
“Already, this is restricting the speech of LGBTQ people, Black people, disabled people, women, and public health experts, climate scientists, and more who are having their content limited,” She said.
“It’s also not just politics, it’s “social commentary”, an incredibly vague and subjective term. I don’t understand how any journalist can support this.”
Earlier this month, Republican Senators obliterated Zuckerberg during a Senate hearing Wednesday, exposing how his big tech platform failed to address child sexual abuse material, which directly led to the deaths of children.
As The Daily Fetched reported:
Zuckerberg looked worse for worse after hearing and was not only humiliated but also had to stand and ace the families of victims of children who had suffered because of his lack of oversight.
He was also told he should be sued for gross dereliction of duty.
The hearing, titled ‘Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis,’ saw Senator Ted Cruz accuse Zuckerberg of helping pedophiles gain access to child porn on Facebook.
“Every parent in America is terrified about the garbage that is directed at our kids,” Cruz told Zuckerberg.
“The phones they have are portals to predators…and each of your companies could do a lot more to prevent it.”
READ: Facebook’s Metaverse Division Records $3.7 Billion Loss, Total Losses over $21 Billion
