Itās been nearly a year since Instagram and Threads defaulted toĀ blocking recommendations of āpoliticalā contentĀ from accounts you donāt already follow, butĀ now Instagram boss Adam Mosseri says, āā¦weāre going to be adding political content to recommendationsā on both platforms.
Thatās a sharp turn fromĀ his statements in 2023laying out the goal of a āless angry place for conversationsā that wouldnāt do anything to encourage politics or hard news. However, under Metaās new approach to moderation ā and new rules aboutĀ what users can say on its platformsā that goal is going out the window just as the Trump administration prepares to take over.
Until now, users have had to opt-in to seeing recommendations of content deemed political, but the change rolling out this week in the US and to the rest of the world next week will turn on the recommendations and a content control setting available with options for less, standard (the default setting), and more.
In a series of Threads posts, MosseriĀ reiterated, āIāve maintained very publicly and for a long time that it not our place to show people political content from accounts they donāt follow,ā and that āitās proven impractical to draw a red line around what is and is not political content.ā
In aĀ video on Instagram,Ā he said that the push for political content ā particularly from users on Threads ā is āby the way, very different from the feedback we were getting only a few years ago about people feeling that they were overly exposed to political content on our platforms.ā Of course, according to theĀ Wall Street Journal, that was before Mark Zuckerberg experienced the effects of filters cutting down the reach of his post about recovering from a torn ACL and before Metaās new and friendlier-to-Trump policy chief took over.
All these fuckers must be investing in Bluesky or something.
spent all of last year chasing queer users away by claiming having an lgbtq identity was politics just so they can flip and force conservative grifters into your feeds whether you like it or not
Well, guys, the internet was a good idea while it lasted. A fun experiment. Shame itās gonna take the rest of modern society along with it.
Can we just go back to anonymously calling each other insensitive names while playing video games with triple-digit ping times? Any era after that was just the downfall.
āIt wasnāt supposed to be this way! It was supposed to be a thing of beauty, not this abomination!ā
4chan is still there. itās old. itās anonymous. itās full of trolls. just sayan.
That was the Internet. People using only AOL or something (Iām born in 1996, so not sure) would apparently not be called Internet users.
Itās the same with Facebook and co now, except they squatted on our free communication space. So they managed to pretend thereās nothing else in the Internet.
Can still have the old thing. Things needed for everyone to use it as intended - hosting and connectivity and naming and authentication solutions. Hosting and connectivity - no-configuration distributed storage of data from your webpage or whatever, solutions to NAT traversal not requiring user configuration (think old Skype). Naming - thatās centralization by definition, but still points of failure can be limited to names signed by some identity provider that doesnāt have to be online. Authentication - thatāll have to be cryptographic identities, so whatās lost is lost. But one can make a convenient for the user āinheritanceā operation, of grabbing everything signed by a certain identity to clone it (while obviously a new identity, can be used in case of losing the old one).
I guess somebody would have already done this.
80ās kid hereā¦
We cannot go back to anonymous users calling each other names. People went way too far down the āmy feelings are hurt and youāre going to jailā path. Thereās no going back to āif you donāt like it go somewhere elseā like it used to be.
There is, it just has to be more convenient, hence the listed functionality.
Thereās Fediverse. Thereās federated or selfhostable messaging. Thereās a multitude of selfhostable solutions for everything. There are peopleās personal websites. It just cannot be killed off by its very nature.
Not good enough due to fragmentation and amount of steps. Attention economy, remember. No attention resource to bother with something manual for a specific person.
Requesting a dump of my FB account data now. Planning to archive my data on my home server and delete my account when i get my zip.
iām setting up a friendica and pixelfed instance on my personal domain to get my family using it. itās not much but at least it gives them an alternative.
There are millions of us who support your decision to leave. Every deleted account matters.
Itās impressive how quick these giants are to pivot on their own morals and philosophies to appease their new masters.
They have morals ? Pretty easy to pivot on something you donāt have
Maybe poor choice of words. How about ideologies?
This has strong āletās enshrine and cement rules that help only us while our fascist team has the leadā vibes.
Wonder if theyāll be recommending content from all sides of the political spectrum, or just the right-wing contentā¦
Itās sqewed in favor of the right, with non-right leaning comments being hidden in favor of those that call all LGBTQ+ people pedophiles (this predated the whole community guideline change fiasco, and was this since progressives started to hate GenAI), and in some countries, you barely get any leftist content, all while the right is being forced upon you.
Could it also be that the opinions youāve mentioned, the ārightā, are the majority, and they had been disproportionally silenced in favor of giving megaphones to the minority?
I could go both ways on this and itās very hard to see, but Iām not in favor of disproportionally silencing or promoting any agenda or voice
Iām afraid we may already knowā¦
Holy shit. Zuck/Mosseri are bowing to the Orange Idiot so much. I want to puke.
More like they were bowing to the previous administration. Political content is a top driver of engagement. Thereās no way they thought it was ever a good idea to suppress it.
Kissing the ketchup covered ring.
Tastes like hamburders and fascism.
Ketchup and shit
Canāt say Iām surprised
Wellā¦
If youāre a Threads/Fediverse user you might want to consider taking a look at the instances that are federated with Threads depending on what you think about this news.Based on this list, any instances you recommend? I did Lemmy.world because I had no clue what I was doing. Just deleted FB and IG accounts, so Iām ready for change!
Lemm.ee has been great to me. The instance owner and maintainer seems like a genuinely decent person. We refused to federate with threads but otherwise we federate with pretty much everyone and leave it up the user to decide what they want to be exposed to.
Thank you for the reply, checking out Lemm.ee and seeing how it goes. Looks like there is no official way to do it, but do you know of any way to export posts/comments from a Lemmy instance? Trying to decide if I delete this account or just leave it as is.
I havenāt found a way to do this or even know if it is possible, sorry.
Not a problem, I appreciate the input!
Hereās a couple that I think are good so far:
- lemmy.ca
- slrpnk.net
- lemmy.blahaj.zone
- pawb.social
- feddit.org
Iām recommending these based on:
- threads blocked at minimum (fedipact being optimal)
- good wholesome community activities and interactions
- high number of trustworthy admins to provide you support and for content moderation (unless you like spam and zero-sum nonsense)
- useful and cool local communities
- my past exp with fellow moderators
Some will be more or less useful or interesting to you so honestly feel free to choose whichever you think fits best for youš¤
Thank you for the reply, Iāll definitely check some of these out. I am interested in fedipact if possible, but Iām gonna give lemm.ee a go for a while. Same question as the other comment, do you know of any way to export posts/comments from a Lemmy instance? Trying to decide if I delete this account or just leave it as is.
no worriesš¤
Same question as the other comment, do you know of any way to export posts/comments from a Lemmy instance? Trying to decide if I delete this account or just leave it as is.
Unfortunately as far as I know this isnāt yet possible, someone please correct me if Iām wrong.
Currently my suggestion is to create a 2-way-link via your profile:
Currently the Voyager app doesnāt show profiles but your profile and links will show up on the Raccoon app
Hope this somewhat helps!
Thanks for sharing. Nice to know my Lemmy instance blocks them, but sad to see my Mastodon instance federating. I guess I should think about moving.
They werenāt before? Instagram was running political ads since at least 2017. It went under the radar because it wasnāt in the US, and nobody cares about content not in English.
In what countries? I hadnāt heard about that.
Regular reminder that rules against politics are just rules against questioning the status quo.
So long as, in the absence of rules, everyone is treated the same. Major social media platforms swing hard right, meaning that leftist positions will be marginalized regardless of the rules or absence thereof.
Cool. Iāll keep not using either of them.
Those platforms are simply cancer.
Enshittify Your Social Media? (y/n): __
Iām so glad I can escape all the politics to Lemmy
