Threads and Instagram are for politics now, says Adam Mosseri
Threads and Instagram are for politics now, says Adam Mosseri
It’s been nearly a year since Instagram and Threads defaulted to blocking recommendations of “political” content from accounts you don’t already follow, but now Instagram boss Adam Mosseri says, “...we’re going to be adding political content to recommendations” on both platforms.
That’s a sharp turn from his statements in 2023laying out the goal of a “less angry place for conversations” that wouldn’t do anything to encourage politics or hard news. However, under Meta’s new approach to moderation — and new rules about what users can say on its platforms— that goal is going out the window just as the Trump administration prepares to take over.
Until now, users have had to opt-in to seeing recommendations of content deemed political, but the change rolling out this week in the US and to the rest of the world next week will turn on the recommendations and a content control setting available with options for less, standard (the default setting), and more.
In a series of Threads posts, Mosseri reiterated, “I’ve maintained very publicly and for a long time that it not our place to show people political content from accounts they don’t follow,” and that “it’s proven impractical to draw a red line around what is and is not political content.”
In a video on Instagram, he said that the push for political content — particularly from users on Threads — is “by the way, very different from the feedback we were getting only a few years ago about people feeling that they were overly exposed to political content on our platforms.” Of course, according to the Wall Street Journal, that was before Mark Zuckerberg experienced the effects of filters cutting down the reach of his post about recovering from a torn ACL and before Meta’s new and friendlier-to-Trump policy chief took over.
Well, guys, the internet was a good idea while it lasted. A fun experiment. Shame it's gonna take the rest of modern society along with it.
Can we just go back to anonymously calling each other insensitive names while playing video games with triple-digit ping times? Any era after that was just the downfall.
"It wasn't supposed to be this way! It was supposed to be a thing of beauty, not this abomination!"
4chan is still there. it's old. it's anonymous. it's full of trolls. just sayan.
That was the Internet. People using only AOL or something (I'm born in 1996, so not sure) would apparently not be called Internet users.
It's the same with Facebook and co now, except they squatted on our free communication space. So they managed to pretend there's nothing else in the Internet.
Can still have the old thing. Things needed for everyone to use it as intended - hosting and connectivity and naming and authentication solutions. Hosting and connectivity - no-configuration distributed storage of data from your webpage or whatever, solutions to NAT traversal not requiring user configuration (think old Skype). Naming - that's centralization by definition, but still points of failure can be limited to names signed by some identity provider that doesn't have to be online. Authentication - that'll have to be cryptographic identities, so what's lost is lost. But one can make a convenient for the user "inheritance" operation, of grabbing everything signed by a certain identity to clone it (while obviously a new identity, can be used in case of losing the old one).
I guess somebody would have already done this.
It’s impressive how quick these giants are to pivot on their own morals and philosophies to appease their new masters.
They have morals ? Pretty easy to pivot on something you don't have
Maybe poor choice of words. How about ideologies?
This has strong "let's enshrine and cement rules that help only us while our fascist team has the lead" vibes.
Can't say I'm surprised
Well...
If you're a Threads/Fediverse user you might want to consider taking a look at the instances that are federated with Threads depending on what you think about this news.Based on this list, any instances you recommend? I did Lemmy.world because I had no clue what I was doing. Just deleted FB and IG accounts, so I’m ready for change!
Here's a couple that I think are good so far:
- lemmy.ca
- slrpnk.net
- lemmy.blahaj.zone
- pawb.social
- feddit.org
I'm recommending these based on:
- threads blocked at minimum (fedipact being optimal)
- good wholesome community activities and interactions
- high number of trustworthy admins to provide you support and for content moderation (unless you like spam and zero-sum nonsense)
- useful and cool local communities
- my past exp with fellow moderators
Some will be more or less useful or interesting to you so honestly feel free to choose whichever you think fits best for you🤗
Lemm.ee has been great to me. The instance owner and maintainer seems like a genuinely decent person. We refused to federate with threads but otherwise we federate with pretty much everyone and leave it up the user to decide what they want to be exposed to.
Thanks for sharing. Nice to know my Lemmy instance blocks them, but sad to see my Mastodon instance federating. I guess I should think about moving.
Holy shit. Zuck/Mosseri are bowing to the Orange Idiot so much. I want to puke.
Kissing the ketchup covered ring.
Ketchup and shit
Tastes like hamburders and fascism.
More like they were bowing to the previous administration. Political content is a top driver of engagement. There's no way they thought it was ever a good idea to suppress it.
Requesting a dump of my FB account data now. Planning to archive my data on my home server and delete my account when i get my zip.
There are millions of us who support your decision to leave. Every deleted account matters.
i'm setting up a friendica and pixelfed instance on my personal domain to get my family using it. it's not much but at least it gives them an alternative.
All these fuckers must be investing in Bluesky or something.
Wonder if they'll be recommending content from all sides of the political spectrum, or just the right-wing content...
I'm afraid we may already know...
It's sqewed in favor of the right, with non-right leaning comments being hidden in favor of those that call all LGBTQ+ people pedophiles (this predated the whole community guideline change fiasco, and was this since progressives started to hate GenAI), and in some countries, you barely get any leftist content, all while the right is being forced upon you.
Could it also be that the opinions you’ve mentioned, the “right”, are the majority, and they had been disproportionally silenced in favor of giving megaphones to the minority?
I could go both ways on this and it’s very hard to see, but I’m not in favor of disproportionally silencing or promoting any agenda or voice
They weren't before? Instagram was running political ads since at least 2017. It went under the radar because it wasn't in the US, and nobody cares about content not in English.
In what countries? I hadn’t heard about that.
spent all of last year chasing queer users away by claiming having an lgbtq identity was politics just so they can flip and force conservative grifters into your feeds whether you like it or not
Cool. I'll keep not using either of them.
Those platforms are simply cancer.
Regular reminder that rules against politics are just rules against questioning the status quo.
So long as, in the absence of rules, everyone is treated the same. Major social media platforms swing hard right, meaning that leftist positions will be marginalized regardless of the rules or absence thereof.
Enshittify Your Social Media? (y/n): __
I'm so glad I can escape all the politics to Lemmy
I thought instagram was for college aged girls to post thirst pics, and then complain that they can't find anybody who respects them for their intellect.
Aw, did a pretty girl turn you down?