I don't use Instagram, but I also don't want any politics in my cereal, so that would be fine here.
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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Personally I wouldn't be affected by this since it only affects recommendations, but the issue is that Meta gets to decide what is "political".
Nearly everything has a political component to it, and this can be an excuse for hiding content that the company doesn't want as many people to see. Activism for example is "political".
Having the option to set the flag would be nice for those who want a filtered feed. I'm just suspicious I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That would be fine by me as long as they are hiding all political content, not just the content they don't agree with.
Instagram isn’t for politics. It’s for wanting to see your friends but instead getting low-quality content irrelevant to your interests no matter how hard you try to train the “algorithm.”
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."
This is a huge red flag and people who are initially pleased to read this should take pause.
Meta are getting to decide what content you hide from you based on their definition of politics and enabling this for users by default (many users will never change this setting). Their definition of what constitutes as "politics" will not be one shared with a regular person.
They didn't "boot" news sites. News sites got a law passed that completely broke the internet by requiring sites to pay for the privilege of doing them the service of linking to their news content. You can't pretend they're stealing from you by displaying the content you explicitly ask them to display, then also say they're fucking you over by not displaying your content in response to you claiming that linking to it is stealing from you.
The only issue with this (outside of the fact that it's still on a Facebook service, which means it's impossible for it to be justifiable to use) is that the setting isn't "zero" instead of "limited".
The fact that Meta is doing this makes me suspicious. Here in Canada, they booted off news organizations
You can blame Canada for this, not Meta. Canadian news orgs tried to extort them, Meta said no thanks, as is their right.
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.
My Facebook is full of anticapitalist memes, but then that's the kind of page I subscribe to
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.
It's also localizes information more, making you easier to manipulate and less likely to realize people are pissed off about something you may not know anything about. Stifling change.
I have seen trans creators in IG reporting that they are being filtered by this setting, so that's not great.
Were they posting things re laws related to gender? If yes, maybe Instagram treated those as political and maybe those content didn't reach many folks – due to the limit setting discussed in the article.
No, mostly just regular posts, meta just decided that being trans is "political".
Instagram should fix its algorithm then.
Yeah, that's why I brought it up, Meta is kind of a shit company.
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.
Seems Meta wants a long positive session.
I'm sure their advertisers prefer to be associated with positive activities more than negative ones.
Have you peeked your head into IG recently? I spend a lot of time there, some of the content and specially the comments sections are just absolutely unhinged. More than any other platform I've been on too, it's a relatively new thing it started happening about 2 years ago. It's actually a good time, reminds me of the internet circa 2008.
IG comments are absolutely hilarious
Right? I cannot believe how consistently toxic ig comments are, even on the most unsuspecting videos. I'm surprised this isn't talked about more often. The constant sexism is just jading. Negative comments skyrocket to the top of the comment section because they get the most replies, and there is no down voting functionality. But I think it's gotten slightly better recently? I wonder if the limiting of political content has anything to do with it. Maybe ig is actually trying to improve their platform.
specially the comments sections are just absolutely unhinged. More than any other platform I've been on too
Woah, even worse than the shitfest that is YouTube comments?
Yuuup lol
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"
Well, you found this political post and commented on it.
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.
This is very bad.
I see nothing wrong in this.
Me neither. Recommendation engines already were a closed box that were being gamed to influence people's opinions. This just removes one attack vector from it, and, as I understand it, it's optional as well. It would be even better if there'd be more genres to block imho.
Me neither. Even though I don't use Instagram / Threads I know it's literally their thing, quite often communicated by management in interviews etc.
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.
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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