As we get deeper into the 2024 election year, more and more online services are announcing how they will be handling political content. Today, the official Instagram blog announced some changes on how the Meta-owned social network, along with its sister network Threads, will be showing political content on its services.
In short, if you don"t directly follow any political Instagram or Threads accounts, these services will no longer "proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads" as the default.
Users who want to see more suggested content that is political in nature on both Instagram and Threads can now go into the Instagram control settings for "Suggested content". They should see a new "political content" option. When tapped, they enter this new settings section and can tap either "Don"t limit" or "Limit". The blog post adds this new setting section will be included on Facebook sometime in the future.
The blog post states:
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 doesn’t 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 account’s content can still reach their followers in Feed and Stories.
The generative AI company OpenAI has already announced it will not allow the use of its ChatGPT and DALL-E models to be used by political campaigns or for any lobbying purposes. It has already banned one developer who had created an AI chatbot for a political action committee that was designed to simulate chatting with US House of Representatives member Dean Phillips, the long-shot US Democratic Presidential candidate.