As a significant part Its content is an overhaul of moderation policies Announced Tuesday, Meta admitted that its approach to limiting political content across its platform was “pretty blunt” and will now be addressed. The company said it will once again phase out political content on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, allowing people who want political content in their feeds to see more.
Meta has reduced the amount of political content in its apps since 2021, Meta noted A blog postBased on user feedback that they want to see less of this content in their feed. However, changes to limit active recommendations in Instagram's apps went live last year.
Meta decided in early 2024 Stop actively recommending Political content to users on Instagram and Threads — a move made in a critical US presidential election year, let's remember — was met with backlash from both users and creators. Hundreds of creators Signed an open letter In April it argued that the decision to limit political content should be an opt-in rather than a switch by default.
Creators were particularly concerned with how the meta would determine which content was political. Instagram defines this content as anything related to laws, elections, or social issues, which they said would limit the reach of conversations around issues like climate change, gun control, and reproductive rights.
They were worried about how these changes would limit their reach and ability to reach new audiences, which would have a direct impact on their ability to grow their personal brand and therefore their income.
Users, meanwhile, felt that there were changes on Meta in how political content was being published Suppressing their voices across social media. That didn't help either A “bug” appeared later Again to suppress political content by returning users' settings to default, which will limit political content they don't follow.
Despite these changes, there continues to be a clear demand for politics in users' feeds — especially Threads, the Matter X/Twitter alternative, where political content is often Dominate the trends section.
Meta today explained how it will make changes to political content in users' feeds, saying it will take a “more personalized approach” going forward. For starters, it takes “citizen content” from the people and pages you follow on Facebook and treats it like any other content in your feed — meaning it's ranked and displayed based on both explicit and implicit signals, like how many users Liked a post. or saw it.
The company said it will recommend more political content to people based on these personalized signals and expand options to control how much content people watch. The latter indicates that Meta will implement certain controls users can toggle between their settings. It's unclear how Meta will advertise to users when and where these controls will be available.