Two of Meta Platforms' most prominent apps, Instagram and Threads, reported that they will give users the ability to disable political content recommendations from appearing on their feeds.
Instagram and Threads released a statement justifying the decision by saying that they "want to be a great experience for everyone." This policy only affects content classified as recommendations, and not those posted by users' followers:
We want Instagram and Threads to be a great experience for everyone. If you decide to follow accounts that post political content, we don’t want to get between you and their posts, but we also don’t want to proactively recommend political content from accounts you don’t follow. 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. If you still want these posts recommended to you, you will have a control to see them.
The next step for Meta Platforms is to apply this same measure to the company's largest social network. "If people still want to see this type of political content on Threads and Instagram recommendation surfaces, there will be a control for people to choose to see it. This control will also roll out on Facebook at a later date," the statement said.
Social networks have become one of the great tools for politics. Thanks to their large audience, political parties and advisors are taking advantage of the platforms to share their speeches and programs to obtain a greater number of voters, especially from the younger crowd.
