Meta won’t recommend political content to users. Here’s what it means for politics

Meta announced in February it would stop proactively recommending political content on Instagram and Threads as journalists, voters, and political content creators gear up for this election season.

What happened

According to the policy change, there would be a recommendation control for users who choose to see political content. Meta, who owns Threads, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, would still show content from accounts users follow.

“If political content – potentially related to things like laws, elections, or social topics – is posted by an account that is not eligible to be recommended, that account’s content can still reach their followers in Feed and Stories,” Meta wrote. 

Meta’s change didn’t sit well with  news and political creators who rely on the platforms to spread awareness on current issues.

“The whole value-add for social media, for political people, is that you can 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,” Keith Edwards, a Democratic political strategist and content creator, told the Washington Post. “There’s TV ads, but who watches TV anymore? Most people are on their phones, and Meta apps are where most people hang out.”

What’s more

Threads leadership had previously expressed a similar stance, indicating a reluctance to feature hard news or political content on the platform, according to Axios.

According to a report by Human Rights Watch, Meta has either taken down or suppressed content posted by Palestinians and their supporters, including about human rights abuses, on both Instagram and Facebook. The majority of the content was peaceful and in support of Palestine, the report said. 

“In addition, in over 300 cases documented by Human Rights Watch, users reported and provided evidence of being unable to appeal the restriction on their account to the platform, which left the user unable to report possible platform violations and without any access to an effective remedy,” the HRW said. “Meta has long been on notice that its policies have resulted in the silencing of Palestinian voices and their supporters on its platforms.”

What’s next

Not only is the change hindering educational purposes from content creators, but it’s also affecting how politicians use social media. 

An analysis by the Pew Research Center shows candidates from the federal, state, and local levels shared nearly 14,000 tweets per day in October 2022. Of more than 8,000 candidate Twitter accounts, one in five candidate tweets has mentioned race, abortion, education or the economy. 

While Democratic candidates often tweeted about climate change and abortion, Republican candidates produced most of those focusing on immigration. In tweets that mention race, “critical race theory” and “woke” are most common among Republican members while for Democratic members, their word choices are “equity,” “discrimination,” or “systemic racism.”

Currently, there is no workaround for political organizations to maximize their social media presence amid this new change. Last year, X users turned to the newly-launched Threads as an alternative after censorship concerns. This year, with the newly implemented policy, users might once again find themselves exploring alternative platforms outside of Meta’s ecosystem.

In the mean time, here's an episode from our network podcasts.

‍How Do We Fix It?: #133 Facebook and YouTube Threats: Zeynep Tufekci

An episode on how social media intertwines with our privacy and freedom, this one takes a deep dive into different forms of content we see daily on social platforms — targeted ads, fake news, and even “dark posts.” When factoring in Meta’s newest policy, our data are exposed yet we can’t really control what information is made available to us. Give this one a listen!

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