Threads and Instagram will recommend political content after all

Meta is continuing to overhaul its moderation and content rules. Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted today that Instagram and Threads will start including political content in recommendations. It's a reversal from the policy the two platforms adopted last year, which made political content something users had to choose if they wanted to see. Now, Mosseri said that there will be three levels of political content that Instagram and Threads users can pick to see: less, standard (which will be the default) and more.

"It’s proven impractical to draw a red line around what is and is not political content," Mosseri wrote. The change will begin rolling out this week in the US and in the rest of the world over the coming weeks.

This announcement is the latest in a series of shifts Meta is making that seem like efforts to curry favor with President-elect Donald Trump. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company would eliminate third-party fact-checkers in favor of a Community Notes model for Facebook, Instagram and Threads, mimicking the approach taken at X (formerly Twitter). Nick Clegg stepped down as Meta's president of global affairs to be replaced by Joel Kaplan, who is well-connected to Republicans in Washington DC.

Yesterday, Instagram was also discovered to have blocked several LGBTQ hashtags and treated them as "sexually suggestive material" for months. The company said this was an error. 

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