Why you should care about Instagram restricting the political content you see
The social media platform has automatically limited political news on all profiles. This impacts young people’s ability to engage in informed dialogue
The social media platform has automatically limited political news on all profiles. This impacts young people’s ability to engage in informed dialogue
You know when you’re on a terrifying rollercoaster and it’s hard to keep your eyes open, because if you can’t see how high up you are, the danger almost doesn’t exist? Well, that’s basically what Instagram is trying to do with its audience, except there are real-world consequences like democracy, social justice and equality at stake here. Let us break it down: the Meta-owned social media platform has automatically limited political content on all its Instagram and Threads accounts in the hopes to make it a “great experience for everyone”.
In case you choose to keep this feature turned on – or hadn’t realised any change had taken place – no political information will show up on your feed, Reels, Explore page or suggested users, unless you already follow a news account. Meta’s definition of ‘political content’ is also vast and vague: any content that “is likely to mention governments, elections or social topics that affect a group of people and/or society at large” is dubbed political. While the company announced this update in a minor blog post on February 9, most Instagram users only discovered this over the past week as outcry over the feature took social media by storm.
At first glance this may sound fair – big chunks of such content are often stressful and bleak.However this risks eliminating healthy, political conversation, which is essential for running conscious, just and informed democratic governments. It’s also noteworthy that Instagram didn’t ask its users if they wanted to opt out of receiving political news. The company opted you out automatically, and now gives you the chance to opt into news if you feel like it. Surely, this should be the other way around? Some vulnerable segments of the population may require a limited exposure to politics but for vast majorities this access is a constitutional right.
If you want to undo Instagram’s update and opt in to receive political content on the platform, here’s how you can:
- Click on the three bars at the top right corner of your profile
- Then click on settings and scroll down to ‘suggested content’
- Here you’ll see a political content option, click on that and switch from “limit political content from the people you don’t follow” to “don’t limit political content from the people you don’t follow”
- Now you can get back to being informed and engaged x