Instagram and Threads To Recommend Political Content

Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced that they would be adding political content to recommendations on Instagram and Threads. Earlier, Instagram and Threads blocked recommendations of political content from accounts that a user does not follow.

“We’re going to be adding political content to recommendations,” stated Mosseri, who in 2023 said that his goal was to create “less angry place for conversations.”

The change will roll out in the United States this week and to the rest of the world next week. Content control settings will be available, adjusting the political content to three options: less, standard (the default), and more.

“I’ve maintained very publicly and for a long time that it is not our place to show people political content from accounts they don’t follow, but (1) a lot of people have been very clear that they want this content, and (2) it’s proven impractical to draw a red line around what is and is not political content,” Mosseri reiterated in a series of posts on Threads.

In an Instagram video, Mosseri said that there has been a change in the user feedback on political content. “This is, by the way, very different from the feedback we were getting only a few years ago about people feeling that they were overly exposed to political content on our platforms,” he said.

This policy change coincides with the Trump administration’s preparation to assume power. Meta has also announced changes to content moderations on its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram. The tech giant has replaced third-party fact-checking with user-written “community notes” similar to Elon Musk’s social media platform, X.