Instagram users taken aback by Meta's restrictions on political content (including “social topics”)

It’s over a month since Meta said they’ll stop recommending political content and users are furious.

Ars Technica reports that Instagram users have started complaining on X/Twitter after discovering that Meta has begun limiting recommended political content by default.

Back in February, when the announcement was made, Meta said:



Fast-forward to present days. There’s an abundance of users who complain on X/Twitter about it and they’re not happy their accounts are set to limit such posts by default:

“Political content is likely to mention governments, elections, or social topics that affect a group of people and society at large”, reads the Instagram settings page for such kinds of posts. Even if you’re sick of politics and you just want to see another cat/dog/red panda video, the “… or social topics that affect a group of people…” part is extremely vague and could incorporate… well, everything.

To change the setting and not let Meta’s algorithm decide what’s a political post (and what’s not) that you should or should not see, users can navigate to Instagram's menu for “settings and activity” in their profiles, and update their “content preferences”. There’s a “political content” menu (the last item under a list of “suggested content”) where users can set preferences for what content is recommended in their feeds.

Choosing “don't limit” means “you might see more political or social topics in your suggested content,” the app says. By default, all users are set to “limit,” which means “you might see less political or social topics.”

This affects suggestions in Explore, Reels, Feed, Recommendations, and Suggested Users. It does not affect content from accounts you follow. This setting also applies to Threads.