WEBWIRE – Thursday, February 15, 2024
We want Instagram and Threads to be a great experience for everyone. If you decide to follow accounts that post political content, we dont want to get between you and their posts, but we also dont want to proactively recommend political content from accounts you dont follow. So were extending our existing approach to how we treat political content we wont proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads. If you still want these posts recommended to you, you will have a control to see them.
These recommendations updates apply to public accounts and in places where we recommend content such as Explore, Reels, In-Feed Recommendations and Suggested Users it doesnt change how we show people content from accounts they choose to 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 accounts content can still reach their followers in Feed and Stories.
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.
If people still want to see this type of political content on Threads and Instagram recommendation surfaces, there will be a control for people to choose to see it. This control will also roll out on Facebook at a later date.
Were always working to improve our recommendation systems and give people control so we can connect people with the most relevant posts to them. Well roll out these changes slowly over time to get this right.