Instagram’s Threads Feature to Cease Political Recommendations

Instagram and Threads will no longer “proactively recommend political content” to its users, instead making it an opt-in for those who want to see it, parent company Meta announced Friday.

Meta said the changes will roll out “slowly over time to get this right.

The changes follow those made to Facebook the past few years amid criticism that the platform has been a harbor of mis- and disinformation in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

“If you decide to follow accounts that post political content, we don’t want to get between you and their posts, but we also don’t want to proactively recommend political content from accounts you don’t follow,” Meta said in Friday’s announcement. “So we’re extending our existing approach to how we treat political content — we won’t proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads.

“If you still want these posts recommended to you, you will have a control to see them.”

The release said the changes apply to places that recommend content to users — explore, reels, in-feed recommendations, and suggested users.

This change follows an October mandate to not “amplify news” on Instagram and Threads.

When Threads was launched in July as an alternative to X, formerly Twitter, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said the goal was “to create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less angry place for conversations, but not all of Twitter.”