I don’t use Instagram, but I also don’t want any politics in my cereal, so that would be fine here.
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.”
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.
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My Facebook is full of anticapitalist memes, but then that’s the kind of page I subscribe to
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.
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
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.
I see nothing wrong in this.
whether 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)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.
reach 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.
Edit: why is this downvoted? Are people really this dumb to not know when or whom to vote for? Why do they need Instagram for that? Wtf?? Are people not reading actual news anymore?
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? I even quoted the part of the news article, did you read it?
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. I just read Tagesschau maybe once a week (not my only news source but still) and get a letter here when there’s a vote.
You guys are really depending of Instagram and tiktok. Well I guess I live in a different world, as another user said.
