In the throws of the 2024 presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, social media giant Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, has taken steps to suppress political content on its platforms.
The new feature rolled out earlier this year prevents any content flagged as “political” from being recommended to users on Instagram. Posts “about laws, elections, or social topics” will not not be displayed in any of the platform’s curated recommendation systems, which drives a significant amount of follower growth for platforms.
The company claims the filter is not meant to limit the exposure of any candidate or publisher specifically, and is instead meant to insulate users from politically charged content in general. “Our goal is to preserve the ability for people to choose to interact with political content, while respecting each person’s appetite…
