Instagram And Threads Will Limit Recommending Political Content (Image: Pixabay)

Tech giant Meta is making major changes to how its social apps work. Meta recently made an announcement that they will no longer actively promote political content to Instagram users. The same policy is also applicable to Threads, a competitor to Elon Musk’s X.

“So we’re extending our existing approach to how we treat political content – we won’t proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads,” said Meta in an announcement shared on the Instagram blog on February 9. Meta stated that they do not want to “proactively recommend” political content from accounts that users do not follow.

According to Meta, the latest changes will impact Instagram Reels, Instagram Explore, and In-Feed Recommendations across both Instagram and Threads. Meta also added that the latest changes will impact Instagram’s role in recommending content, but not how it shows content from accounts users already follow. Meta said that they have spent the last few years refining their approach on Facebook to reduce the amount of political content.

Meta also informed that professional accounts will be able to use the Account Status feature to see if their posts are eligible to be recommended. “From Account Status, they can edit or remove recent posts, request a review if they disagree with our decision,” added Meta.

The tech giant also further stated that they have introduced a new control feature to help users who wish to continue viewing political content on Threads and Instagram. This control feature will also be rolled out on Facebook soon. Meanwhile, Instagram head Adam Mosseri wrote in a post on Threads that Meta”s goal is to preserve the ability for people to choose to interact with political content, “while respecting each person’s appetite for it.” Meta”s crucial move comes as major elections are going to take place around the world in 2024.