Instagram restricts political content by default

Instagram users were stunned to discover that the platform restricts political content by default without directly notifying them.

Here's What We Know

One of the reactions was a post by a user named Olayemi Olurin, who stressed that he did not immediately understand the restrictions until he saw the comment and warned other users about the situation. The post received over 150,000 views.

A similar reaction was demonstrated by a user named Matt, who expressed surprise and questioned the restriction in his post. This post also received a significant number of views, over 40,000.

Meta noted that the changes took place in February of this year, but did not directly notify platform users of the restrictions. Instead, the company published a blog post stating its intention not to proactively recommend political content from accounts to which you are not subscribed.

A Meta spokesperson explained that these changes were made in response to users who indicated a desire to see less political content in their feeds.

Here's How It Works

To change these settings, users are allowed to go to the "Settings and Activity" menu in their profiles, where they can update their content preferences. They can choose the "do not restrict" option to see more political or social content. Alternatively, they can stay with the default setting, which restricts this content.

Source: Ars Technica