Technology

I don't use Instagram, but I also don't want any politics in my cereal, so that would be fine here.

The potential issues:

• this was enabled for everyone by default instead of being opt-in
• It's hard to tell what will be blocked by this. "Activism" is political. Calling out tech oligopolies is "political", and by extension advertising the fediverse could be "political". This could be an easy way to hide content that harms Meta or its partners.
• It encourages users and content creators to avoid controversial topics. It's hard to fix issues in our communities if we don't talk about them

The fact that Meta is doing this makes me suspicious. Here in Canada, they booted off news organizations and now instead of reputable organizations sharing what's happening, that niche is filled by other... content.

I personally try to avoid any suggested content and only use my subscriptions. For those who want to change it back:

change the setting, users can navigate to Instagram's menu for "settings and activity" in their profiles, where they can update their "content preferences." On this menu, "political content" is the last item under a list of "suggested content" controls that allow users to set preferences for what content is recommended in their feeds.

There is one good side. While we can't see the algorithms used to classify content as "political", creators can check their own status and publicize issues:

Meta's blog noted that "professional accounts on Instagram will be able to use Account Status to check their eligibility to be recommended based on whether they recently posted political content. From Account Status, they can edit or remove recent posts, request a review if they disagree with our decision, or stop posting this type of content for a period of time, in order to be eligible to be recommended again."

I think this is a great thing. Algorithm-driven political content recommendations are a major reason why the US is so divided right now. If we reduce the amount of political content people see online (for everyone on the political spectrum) then I think that's a great way to combat division. The upcoming election shitshow won't be as bad if people aren't constantly seeing content online designed to enrage them.

So if you turn that setting off, I assume your timeline is completely overtaken by alt-right propaganda and boomer memes. This is Facebook (er... Meta) after all.

I have seen trans creators in IG reporting that they are being filtered by this setting, so that's not great.

When I think of Instagram, I think of selfies, food pics, landscapes, pet pics and other pretty pics.

Political feuds online can be nasty right? There are long toxic conversations. Folks spend much time arguing on the platform. Meta likes that long session. But it seems Meta is promoting positivity? Seems Meta wants a long positive session.

My intuition says that there's probably less people who are angry that IG is showing them less political content than there would be angry users when they found out there was an option to limit it in the settings that they didn't know of. Like seriously. Who the heck opens social media and thinks: "there should be more politics here"

If they are shocked by this, wait until they understand what meta does with their PII and behavioural information... I'm sure they will understand any day now. Any day...

Good. Internet people are awful at political discussions.

Edit: being emotionally unguarded online isnt a bad thing, just... not without trusting the website in the same way you would with a trust fall. This was aimed more at Tik-tok like sites.

IG, if I'm not mistaken its kind of like Tik-tok in that its a shotgun blast of random, emotionally charged ideas. Because the consumer is actively positioned to engage with the content in an unshielded emotional state (the player actively discourages/disallows pausing that would give you time to emotionally or mentally digest what you are watching, its also so simple you don't need to). With this setup, the user is uncritically (almost like hypnosis) influenced by what users make and then what Facebook spins it to mean. No matter how manipulative it may be.

This feels like a patch over a broken system to protect them from the parasitic ideas the users would be vulnerable to, as well as genuine activism, trans people, and other false-positives the "political" filter picks up.

Facebook would just apply a secret global filter for ideas they don't want you to see, only placing the manipulation into the "political" filter when they need a scapegoat and the ability to look progressive.

I see nothing wrong in this.

This should have been communicated.

Other than that its a good thing in my book!

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Instagram users have started complaining on X (formerly Twitter) after discovering that Meta has begun limiting recommended political content by default.

Instead, Instagram rolled out the change in February, announcing in a blog that the platform doesn't "want to proactively recommend political content from accounts you don’t follow."

For general Instagram and Threads users, this change primarily limits what content posted can be recommended, but for influencers using professional accounts, the stakes can be higher.

The change also came amid speculation that Meta was "shadowbanning" users posting pro-Palestine content since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, The Markup reported.

"Our investigation found that Instagram heavily demoted nongraphic images of war, deleted captions and hid comments without notification, suppressed hashtags, and limited users’ ability to appeal moderation decisions," The Markup reported.

On X, even Instagram users who don’t love seeing political content are currently rallying to raise awareness and share tips on how to update the setting.

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