How Meta's politics policy has impacted my account - with receipts!
The numbers behind why I am posting so much about needlepoint
On February 9th of this year, Instagram announced they were going to change their approach to political content. The announcement seemed pretty clear, they would not put political content on the FYP (recommended content page) but would continue to allow people who followed political accounts to see that content. (“If you decide to follow accounts that post political content, we don’t want to get between you and their posts”)
They said that users would have the power to opt-in to seeing political content.
They said that political creators could check the “account status” to see their eligibility to be recommended based on whether they recently posted political content.
There was significant media coverage about what this would mean, particularly focused on how Meta would determine what is “political.” For people from marginalized communities, their very existence is politicized - would Meta be throttling their content and allowing tradwife content to proliferate?
What I can say is that over a month later, it’s clear to me that Instagram is throttling political content but it’s certainly not in the way they said it would.
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