OtterUsers shocked to find Instagram limits political content by default
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.”
9point6This 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 them to pay for the privilege of doing them the service of linking to their content.
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.
0oWowI don’t use Instagram, but I also don’t want any politics in my cereal, so that would be fine here.
That would be fine by me as long as they are hiding all political content, not just the content they don’t agree with.
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)_/¯
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.”
TFO WinderI see nothing wrong in this.
miskIt’s literally their thing, quite often communicated by Instagram / Threads management in interviews etc.
just another devMe 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 they’d be more genres to block imho.
This should have been communicated.
Other than that its a good thing in my book!
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…
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.
Good. Internet people are awful at political discussions.
Zuberi 👀This is very bad.
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
leanleftwhether or not tiktok spreads misinformation…* i do not know.*
but its the only platform i know that feeds your political tendancies if you continually seek it out.
i am very certain that other platforms tend to funnel you toward trad lib (if anything at all!)
so, what some people claim about mainstream censorship… is true. (in my experience)
but its the only platform i know that feeds your political tendancies if you continually seek it out.
i am very certain that other platforms tend to funnel you toward trad lib (if anything at all!)
so, what some people claim about mainstream censorship… is true. (in my experience)
Most platforms lead people to more of what they already believe. If you watch one video from the wrong YouTuber, your entire feed will be nothing but neoconservatives.
Yeah, I really hated the new Star Wars trilogy, and so watched a few reviews of them. This caused YouTube to recommend me more and more nuttier right-wing videos, because many negative reviews of those movies were done by right wingers (like Geeks & Gamers and Nerdrotic) that followed these up by more and more “woke”-critical videos over time.
It took years to retrain the algorithm that I’m not a right-wing nutjob.
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.
Down voted for having a logical thought, that’s the new Reddit.
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.
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.
MataVatnikHave 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
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 not deeply engage with the content (the player actively discourages/disallows pausing that would give you time to absorb what you are watching,). 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.
SomeGuy69reach normal people who might not otherwise hear a message that they need to hear, like, abortion is on the ballot in Florida, or voting is happening today
Uhm, maybe that’s a good thing, you don’t want people with single digit brain cells to vote anyways. How is it possible to rely on Instagram to remember to vote? Don’t you get a letter that you’re allowed to vote on date x? At least in my country you do.
richieadlerIn my country it’s a big deal because voting is mandatory and you get a fine if you don’t vote.
Yes. I think it’s important too. Not sure what people read in my comment. Yet why should people rely on Instagram to know to vote. Instagram is a social media that has nothing to do with real world or politics of a country.
Yet why should people rely on Instagram to know to vote?
Nobody said they should. But people are idiots and make conclusions from what they read in there anyway, so they should be liable if they spread misinformation or if they, like Facebook, contributed to a coup in Myanmar or had a role in the attempt of taking the US Capitol.
Instagram is a social media that has nothing to do with real world or politics of a country.
You really need to live inside a jar to believe that nonsense.
Remember Cambridge Analytica? One of the selling arguments is that they helped the triumph in my country of a right-wing party by using Facebook. So “nothing to do with real world or politics”? Fuck that noise.
In the US at least, voter suppression like you are suggesting is a big part of why Trump got elected in the first place and why Republicans keep getting elected. Republicans especially try to keep working class minority communities from voting because they (the minority communities) statically prefer Democrats.
What? I’m not suggesting voters suppression. It’s about Instagram, what has this to do with voters suppression? Don’t you get informed about incoming vote by a letter?
No, we don’t get letters in the mail about elections. The options are news, radio, or look it up yourself outside of social media. With streaming so popular, people don’t see near as many ads as they used to on their TV. That leaves social media as the biggest informer of upcoming elections and to hear about issues.
Omg. That’s horrible, but now I understand the downvotes. I envy you not.