Ali Schulz
Editor-in-Chief
Instagram, owned by Meta, added a new update in March that automatically restricts the amount of political content users see on their feed, unless manually changed by the user in settings.
According to NBC News, the new update has stopped users from getting recommended political accounts that they do not follow.
In addition, NBC News stated, “This setting excludes content that is ‘likely to mention governments, elections, or social topics that affect a group of people and/or society at large from the platforms
discovery mechanisms.’”
The discovery mechanisms on Instagram are where users are suggested content from accounts they don’t follow that Instagram believes they would be interested in. With this new update, political content will no longer be included.
Critics voiced their opinions on the
new update.
According to TIME Magazine, one of these critics was Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee who stated, “‘Instagram is now trying to suppress political content just months before the next presidential election. Why is Meta attempting to censor the democratic pro-
cess?’”
Another critic was Katie Grossbard, a news influencer and attorney, who believes the definition of political content is unclear.
According to NBC News, Grossband said, “‘This decision directly harms com-
munities whose entire existence is political, and is there a difference between posting content about nonpartisan election dates, verses posting about a court case that impacts reproductive freedom verses posting a slideshow about trans history?’”
Meta has tried to reduce political content since 2021, so this did not come as a surprise, but users are frustrated that Meta did not inform people about this change and when it would occur.
This led to frustration from users, as they were not informed of this restriction, and therefore did not know that the restriction was in place for them.
There are accounts across social media that have been working to inform users of the change, and teach them how to get rid of it.
To view this restriction, one must first open Instagram and go to their page. Afterwards, the user must click the three lines in the top righthand corner and click settings and privacy.
Then, scroll down to content preferences. Click on it, and then click on political content. From there, the user can select whether they would like to stop limiting the amount of content they see, or
if they would like to continue to keep the restriction in place.
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Ali Schulz- Junior EditorThis will be Ali Schulz’s second year on ECHO Staff. She also made several contributions while taking journalism class her freshman year. She was opinion/news editor her first year on staff |
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