• Instagram and Threads users will now have to opt-in to seeing political content from accounts they don’t follow.
• This feature is rolling out to users amid a rise in political discourse during elections being held in over 90 countries this year.
• The feature aims to reduce the spread of extremist content among users while still allowing political accounts to reach their followers.

Later this year South Africa will join a host of other countries hosting elections. For those hoping to see conversations on Meta platforms, you may be left wanting.

This is because, as reported by The Verge, Threads and Instagram now feature an option to “Limit political content from people you don’t follow” which is enabled by default. To be clear, if you follow a politician, political analyst, or journalist on Instagram or Threads you will still see that content but you won’t see content from others.

You can change this setting to see content from accounts you don’t follow by heading to your Account Settings, selecting Content preferences, and then select Limit political content from people you don’t follow. This setting is being rolled out so if you don’t see it, check back later.

The term “political content” as defined by Meta casts a wide net. It includes posts about governments, elections and social topics so it really looks like Meta is trying to limit the potential for folks to see a terrorist attack unfold in real time.

This setting also looks to be – reading between the lines at least – seeking to limit the potential for bad actors to conduct massive influence campaigns. If users can only see political content from accounts they follow, then the likelihood that they will come across rouge political content is limited.

Such a campaign was conducted in South Africa with alarming success. We highly recommend you read the Daily Maverick’s report from 2020 which outlined how a small group of accounts spread xenophobic rhetoric throughout South Africa.

Extremist content is rife on social media, especially on Meta platforms as outlined by the Virgina Commonwealth University.

“Political extremists and terrorists use social media platforms to spread their message. For example, IVolunteer reported that nearly two-thirds of extremists (65 percent) used Facebook to communicate their views and encourage action between 2005 and 2016. In 2021, FBI Director Christopher Wray compared the spread of extremism on social media to foreign disinformation campaigns,” the University wrote in a blog post.

The problem is only getting worse with more and more politically minded citizens leaning toward extremists beliefs. Limiting that rise then is incredibly important and we’re sure Meta doesn’t want to be named as a responsible party should extremism become more prevalent.

Is Meta’s approach to political content the right move? That depends who you ask but for Meta we suspect the benefit here is that by asking users to change a setting, they are tacitly stating that they agree to see content that could potentially upset them. Of course, the firm isn’t saying as much right now but we’re sure that button wasn’t born without some feedback from Meta’s legal advisors.

This setting does, however, negatively impact Threads. Twitter has always been a platform for robust discourse even before Elon Musk purchased it. The platform grew because it was a way to have discussion and debate or witness those events often on political matters.

By preventing political content from reaching a wider audience, Threads is limiting the reach of users who have those discussions which dissuades those users from joining the platform. We guess Threads isn’t replacing X anytime soon.

How do you feel about this option? Will you opt-in to seeing political content from sources you don’t follow? Let us know on X or Facebook.