Angela B. Tech 03.27.2024 01:Mar AM EDT

Instagram Users Will Have to Opt-In to See More ‘Political’ Content

With elections coming, users can expect to see more politics-related content on their feeds. However, Meta has devised a way for users to have the option to avoid it. If they want to see more of it, then they will have to opt in.

Meta Limiting Political Content

Other than Facebook and Threads, Instagram will likely be used for political campaigns and other related content. It's expected given that the photo-centric app has about two billion monthly active users worldwide.

Meta decided to lessen the amount of this kind of post and will remove recommendations and feed suggestions if it was considered as "political." Users will have the choice to have these posts appear on their feed through the site's settings, as reported by The Guardian.

The change has already been implemented in the last several days, so you may have already noticed the change. The update will affect several parts of Instagram including Reels, Explore, and in-app recommendations on one's feed.

This, however, will not affect the content that is posted by accounts that the user already follows. If they want to lessen posts from followed users, they will have to individually mute the accounts themselves. As for other posts, they will have less visibility when they are about laws, elections, or social topics.

Since February, Meta has already been explaining why political content is limited. "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."

While the change is only applied to Instagram and Threads, Meta said that the change would be rolled out at a later date for Facebook. This could be the company's way to lessen the political misinformation spreading on social media as well.

Facebook Banning Political Ads

This isn't the first time that Meta took action when it came to political matters. Back in 2020, the company also prohibited certain ads that were related to elections, social issues, or just politics in general. Some were immediately rejected if they violated Meta's policies.

The ads that are affected are those directed to users in the US, Brazil, India, Israel, and Member States of the EU. There are rules that advertisers must abide by, some of which are simple enough to remember.

For one, ads that discourage people from voting in an election are not allowed, or anything with the same premise. That means that ads that portray voting as useless or meaningless will either be taken down or not be approved in the first place.

Ads that question the "legitimacy of an upcoming or ongoing election" will also be rejected, along with ones that have premature claims of election victory, which could encourage others to vote for the winning candidate or not vote for their candidate at all.

The blog post states that the policies are also applied to ads about upcoming elections in current or future years, as well as ongoing elections that have not been finalized, meaning that these restrictions are still currently followed.