You may have noticed less political content in your Instagram and Facebook feeds this year, and that’s intentional. Specifically, here’s the design Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says New York Times on Tuesday wants its platforms to be less political in the 2024 elections.
“Facebook, Instagram and Threads feature less political content,” the Times said. “The apps’ settings are automatically set to post messages users see about campaigns and candidates.”
Instead of political coverage, meta-apps are now more likely to recommend news about sports, cooking and celebrities.
This is a drastic change from four years ago, when Meta (then Facebook’s original name) bombarded users with more political news. Meanwhile, the company actively policed content related to the Trump-Biden election and COVID-19. In mid-2020, Facebook began placing warning labels on posts from politicians and public figures deemed to be false information; the company also expanded its “hate speech” policy at the time.
Zuckerberg said in the year leading up to the 2020 election that “He paid great attention to election security.“; the company changed its rules on political advertising so that American political advertisers must have a US address.
Facebook also had 40 teams, including an “election security” team. which is associated with National Securitylaw enforcement agencies and state and local election officials to monitor how elections are presented on Facebook and Instagram. This time it was less of a concern for Zuckerberg.
For example, Zuckerberg no longer meets with election security leaders every week, the NYT reported, adding: “He has reduced the number of full-time employees working on the issue and disbanded the election integrity team… though the company says the employees have joined other groups.”
Facebook has also been active on the political front in the months following the 2020 election. Notably, the company banned Trump “indefinitely,” saying the risk of having him on the platform following the Capitol Hill protests (Facebook and Instagram) in January 2021 was “too great.” removed all restrictions about Trump in July).
One reason to hope Meta will continue to disengage from politics: It hasn’t hurt business. The company’s stock price has nearly doubled since Election Day 2020 and is up 63% year-to-date to $564 a share.
