Meta’s involvement in politics and political content on its platforms has sparked significant controversy. The platform has been frequently criticized for promoting content intended to provoke users in the name of engagement. In recent years, the company has tried to distance itself from this reputation and is now allowing users to restrict algorithmically-suggested political content on both Threads and Instagram.
Meta defines political content as any material likely to mention governments, elections, or social topics that affect a group of people or society at large, which covers a wide range of posts. The option to limit this type of content is now being rolled out to users, with the setting automatically enabled by default.
Meta first announced this feature in February, stating that it wants Instagram and Threads to provide a positive experience for all users. Users can check if this feature is available in their account settings on Instagram. By enabling this feature, political content visibility through Explore, Reels, in-feed recommendations, and suggested users will be limited. However, political posts from accounts that the user follows will still appear in their feed.
In the settings, users can choose to limit or not limit political content from accounts they do not follow. Choosing to restrict political content does not completely eliminate it, but rather reduces the frequency of political or social topics in suggested content. This setting applies to both Instagram and Threads.
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