Instagram has chosen to limit content related to government and elections. What’s the reason behind this?
From The Daily Beast. Instagram users were blindsided by the platform’s sneaky rollout of a new content-filtering tool limiting political content—a setting the social-media giant made default for many accounts without ever directly informing users.
Outraged users took to X to express shock on Friday, accusing Instagram of actively censoring and suppressing political discussion in a year already rife with political tensions. …
Instagram put up a new “limit political content” feature in settings and set it as the default for tons of accounts. The timing of this feature is very suspect to me, but anyway here is how to fix it pic.twitter.com/wPofpiFwZk
— michaela okland (@MichaelaOkla) March 22, 2024
People across the political spectrum seemed to believe the change was meant to target their own views: Right-leaning users suggested Meta is attempting to filter “conservative speech only,” while left-leaning users suggested the company is looking to censor pro-Palestinian content related to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
The feature … doesn’t hide content from accounts that a user already follows. However, it limits suggested content deemed “likely to mention governments, elections, or social topics that affect a large group of people and/or society at large.” …
Why do you think Instagram made this decision? Share your thoughts and prayers below.
(Excerpt from The Daily Beast. Photo Credit: Souvik Banerjee on Unsplash)