If you were on Instagram over the past few days you may have seen your friends (or ex-colleagues from two jobs ago) share something on their story about the platform reducing political content.
For instance, the Australian Greens posted an infographic show you how to ensure you continue seeing political content.
This is not a weird social media scam, Instagram and Threads are reducing political content on your feed.
In an effort for Instagram and Threads to be a “great experience for everyone”, it said it was reducing the amount of political content users see on their feeds.
Instagram noted that if you follow political accounts, you will still see them as usual, but for those people who don’t follow political-led accounts, the social media platform says it doesn’t want to “proactively recommend political content from accounts you don’t follow”.
The social media platform said in a blog post, “These recommendation updates apply to public accounts and in places where Instagram recommend content such as Explore, Reels, In-Feed Recommendations and Suggested Users – it doesn’t change how we show people content from accounts they choose to follow.
“If political content – potentially related to things like laws, elections, or social topics – is posted by an account that is not eligible to be recommended, that account’s content can still reach their followers in Feed and Stories.”
For those who don’t mind seeing a few posts from their preferred political parties and leaders, do not fret, there is a way to ensure you still get your content.
How to make sure you see political content on Instagram
- Head to settings
- Under the banner ‘what you see’ click suggested content
- Under political content, you can choose to limit political content from people that you don’t follow or don’t limit content from people you don’t follow
This seems like a weird thing to be doing during a U.S. election year but given Meta’s horrible reputation for being used to spread misinformation, it could be used to curb that. But on the other hand, Facebook is removing the news tab in April so go figure.
This feature will be rolled out to Facebook at a later date.
Image: Instagram/Gizmodo Australia