Meta has fixed a bug that led users to believe the company had adjusted their choices in its political content settings tool without their consent. The issue affected both Instagram and Threads users, and appeared to have reset users' content settings to defaults that limited the amount of political content from people they didn't follow.
On Wednesday, Meta confirmed that it was investigating the issue and working on a fix.
Late Wednesday evening, Meta's communications director, Andy Stone, announced in a thread post that the issue had been resolved. He also shared more details about the nature of the bug, saying that Meta hadn't changed users' political content settings on the backend, but only appeared to do so. This made it appear as if users' choices had been reset in settings, “but no changes were actually made,” Stone wrote in the thread.
The company didn't provide details about how the bug occurred in the first place, but Stone urged users to make sure their settings reflect their preferences.
You can do this through your Instagram settings, where you can scroll down to “Content Settings” and select “Political Content.” Here, you can choose whether or not to limit political content from people you follow. This setting affects suggestions you see in Explore, Reels, feed recommendations, and recommended users, and also applies to threads, the page explains.
The fact that Meta has a political content setting shows the power of algorithm-driven social apps, where content is surfaced based on many factors, rather than simply displaying a chronological feed of people users choose to follow. Other startups like Bluesky and other federated networks are exploring new models for how to moderate or block content on social platforms. Bluesky, for example, allows users to create their own feeds and subscribe to moderation services. But the app's user base of more than 5.9 million is a far cry from Threads' 170 million monthly active users or Instagram's more than 2 billion monthly users.
The new restrictions were first announced earlier this year as a way to insulate Meta from criticism over the power its apps have over people, something it didn't want to be criticized for ahead of the US elections.
The move isn't surprising, given that the tech giant has faced criticism from both sides of the US political spectrum, with Republicans accusing it of censoring free speech and Democrats accusing it of being too soft on misinformation and disinformation. Just weeks after X's rival app Threads launched, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg questioning the app's content moderation policies.
Meta then announced that it would no longer “actively” recommend political content, sparking a backlash from creators.
Fortunately for those who use Instagram and Threads, the bug was resolved ahead of the first political debate of 2024 between Presidents Trump and Biden, scheduled for Thursday night.