Meta to phase back in political content on Facebook, Instagram and Threads

As a part of a significant overhaul of its content moderation policies announced on Tuesday, Meta admitted that its approach to limiting political content across its platforms had been “pretty blunt” and would now be addressed. The company said it would once again phase in political content into Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, allowing people who want political content in their feeds to see more of it.

The amount of political content on Meta’s apps has been reduced since 2021, Meta noted in a blog post, based on user feedback that they wanted to see less of this content in their feeds. However, the changes to limit proactive recommendations on Instagram’s apps went live just last year.

Meta’s early 2024 decision to stop proactively recommending political content to users on Instagram and Threads — a move it made in a critical presidential election year for the U.S., let’s remember — was met with both user and creator backlash. Hundreds of creators signed an open letter in April that argued the decision to limit political content should be one that’s opt-in, instead of being switched on by default.

Creators were particularly concerned about how Meta would determine which content was political. Instagram’s definition describes this content as anything related to laws, elections, or social topics, which they said would limit the reach of conversations around things like climate change, gun control, and reproductive rights, among other things.

They were also worried about how these changes would limit their reach and ability to reach new audiences, which would have a direct impact on their ability to grow their personal brand and, therefore, their income.

Users, meanwhile, felt that Meta’s changes to how political content was being surfaced were suppressing their voice across social media. It also didn’t help that a “bug” later appeared to once again suppress political content by reverting users’ settings back to the default, which would limit political content from those they didn’t follow.

Despite these changes, there continued to be a clear demand for politics in users’ feeds — especially on Threads, Meta’s X/Twitter alternative, where political content would often dominate the trends section.

Meta today explained how it would make changes to political content in users’ feeds, saying that it would take a “more personalized approach” going forward. For starters, it would take “civic content” from people and Pages you follow on Facebook and treat it more like any other content in your feed — meaning ranking it and displaying based on both explicit and implicit signals, like how many users liked a post or viewed it.

The company said it would also recommend more political content to people based on these personalized signals and would expand the options people have to control how much content they see. The latter indicates that Meta will implement specific controls users could toggle within their settings. It’s not clear how Meta will advertise to users when and where these controls would become available.