Threads, Instagram To Promote More Political Content

Meta’s Threads and Instagram platforms are to recommend more political content from those the user is not following, as Meta shifts its policies to be more in line with those of US president-elect Donald Trump, whose inauguration takes place this month.

Meta says the measures it has taken, including ending fact-checking in the US last week, are intended to encourage “free expression”.

The move announced by Threads and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri comes nearly a year after the platforms defaulted to blocking content deemed political from accounts that are not already followed.

Mosseri said Meta would be “adding political content to recommendations” on both platforms.

Political content

The shift takes effect in the US immediately and is to be rolled out around the world in the near future, he said.

Users previously had to opt-in to seeing content deemed political, which Mosseri said in 2023 was aimed at creating a “less angry place for conversations”.

The policy shift means “political” content recommendations will be turned on by default, with a new content control setting provided with options for less, the default of standard, and more.

Mosseri said it had “proven impractical to draw a red line around what is and is not political content”.

In an Instagram video, he said “only a few years ago” users had said they felt “overly exposed to political content” on Meta platforms, but more recently users had “asked to be shown more” such content.

Meta recently brought in a Trump-friendly policy chief and appointed a friend of Trump’s to its board of directors.

Policy shift

The company said its move to end fact-checking in the US was due to alleged bias by fact-checking organisations, echoing claims by Trump and other conservatives about political bias on social media.

Meta’s new “Community Notes” process for moderating content is similar to that brought in by X, formerly Twitter, under owner Elon Musk, a key Trump ally who has often spoken out in favour of free speech and against censorship.

Some Meta staff took to their internal forum to criticise the move to end fact-checking, which was also criticised by the co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Board, the independent body that reviews Facebook and Instagram content.

The European Commission also rejected Zuckerberg’s assertion that EU data laws have censored social media.