“Our goal is to preserve the ability for people to choose to interact with political content, while respecting each person’s appetite for it,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri wrote.

Is politics a major buzzkill? Instagram execs seem to think so.

In a blog post Friday, Instagram, the popular photo and video app owned by Meta, said it will no longer “proactively recommend” political content from accounts that users do not already follow. The same policy applies to Threads, the Twitter-copycat app launched last summer under the Instagram brand.

“We want Instagram and Threads to be a great experience for everyone,” it said. “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.”

By default, going forward Instagram and Threads will not promote political content (unless it’s from accounts users already are following). Both apps will add a setting to let users who still want to see political content recommendations opt to do so — and, according the post, the same control will roll out on Facebook at a later date. Instagram defines “political content” as “potentially related to things like laws, elections or social topics.”

  • squiblet
    11•9 months ago

    Well, no shit. That’s why I finally stopped using Facebook - they were obsessed with filling my feed with political bullshit that I had no interest in (e.g. people from my work or friends’ parents jerking off about how great Trump is - absolutely no good for me to interact with that).

    • @HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world
      8•9 months ago

      I left Facebook in 2020. 4 years of that trump shit I was just tapped out when covid pandemic conspiracy shit hit

      I barely use instagram since then as well

      • squiblet
        4•9 months ago

        I think 2020 was it for me too. I had already stopped visiting more than once every 2-3 months but 2020 was when I finally said wow, fuck this. Some guy who I had to work with professionally - he was actually a show director for a trade show we attended each year - posted a pic, in all seriousness, about how the covid test put a microchip up your nose. Thanks Facebook, I really needed to learn about that. Well, fair warning about the guy I guess. Then I tried to sign into my account just for maintenance in 2023 and though I’d used a linked IG account fairly regularly, and obviously they could tell, it said that I needed to upload my driver’s license to sign into Facebook. Like, who do they think there are? No.