Threads and Instagram users will no longer be able to opt out of seeing political content from people they don’t follow, parent company Meta has announced.
The company said Tuesday’s removal of fact checkers was part of a shift toward “freedom of expression.”
The change was introduced in the US this week and will be expanded globally next week.
Users can’t turn off unsolicited political posts, but they can choose from three settings: “less than,” “normal,” and “greater than.”
Adam Mosseri, the head of both platforms, had previously said he opposed news and political content, but said users had asked to see “more” of such posts.
But Drew Benby, CEO of social media consultancy Battenhall, questioned whether that was accurate, saying the real motive was the “changing political winds” in the US and Donald Trump. He said this was because he would soon return to the White House.
“Threads and Instagram were primarily thought of as ‘safe spaces’, especially in comparison to the tumultuous development of X,” he told the BBC.
He predicted this could lead people to rivals such as Bluesky, but said he was also concerned about the impact on those who remain on the meta platform.
He warned that this week’s changes “open up the possibility for massive amounts of misinformation to spread rapidly across a user base of over 2 billion people.”
Mosseri said that in 2023, Threads and Instagram should focus on “great communities” such as “sports, music, and fashion.”
“The increased engagement and revenue they might drive is simply not worth the associated scrutiny, negativity (to be honest), and integrity risks,” he wrote in a Threads post at the time. I wrote it.
But in a new post on the platform, he explained why that stance was abandoned, saying: “Drawing red lines about what is and isn’t political content is unrealistic. It has been proven to be effective.” Less than that.
Mosseri said Instagram, which Meta acquired for $1 billion in 2012, was founded on the values of creativity and “giving everyone a voice.”
“I hope that by focusing on free speech, we can help move us a little bit better along that path,” he said in an Instagram video.
There has been considerable criticism of the changes already announced by Meta, with concerns expressed about the impact on minorities.
Some users have expressed disappointment with these latest changes in threads and on Instagram.
“Well, it’s time to delete the Threads app. It was good while it lasted,” said one thread user who responded to Mosseri’s post.
Mosseri said on Instagram that politically focused accounts “don’t have to worry about being deprecated” by other users, with some users calling the move “a good move for platform freedom.” “One step,” he praised.
However, many have also expressed concern about the impact of increased content recommendations on social issues and politics in amplifying misinformation and hate speech.
Brooke Erin Duffy, an associate professor of communications at Cornell University, said there will be “winners and losers” in meta content moderation changes.
“Marginalized creators, including women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community, are more likely to have fewer redress mechanisms and face further harm,” she told BBC News.
“At the same time, content created by far-right and ideologically extreme influencers is likely to increase, given the relaxation of policies against hate speech.”
