According to washington post, Mark Zuckerberg's Meta and its Instagram, Facebook, and Threads platforms are suppressing content related to the 2024 election, making it difficult for users to discuss politics and voting. One influencer saw her audience drop by an astonishing 63% just by mentioning the word “vote” in a post.
in exclusive investigation, washington post Technology columnist Jeffrey A. Fowler reveals how Meta's social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook and Threads, are actively suppressing content related to the upcoming 2024 election I made it. This crackdown has affected not only partisan political posts, but also seemingly nonpartisan content that simply mentions words like “voting.”
Fowler's investigation focused on the Instagram account of creator Mrs. Frazzled, whose real name is Ariel Fodor. Fowler analyzed her account data and found that each time Fodor mentioned something politically related over the past six months, her viewership increased by about 40 percent compared to her non-political posts. found that it decreased. Even more surprising, when she used the word “vote” in the caption of 11 of her posts, her average viewership dropped by 63%. Fodor's experience is not an isolated case. Fowler found several other Instagram creators who noticed similar patterns.
This trend is not limited to personal accounts. An extensive study by the advocacy group Accountable Tech quantified the decline in viewership of five prominent left-wing Instagram accounts that post mostly about politics, including human rights campaigners and feminists. Over 10 weeks this spring, average viewership dropped by 65%. The study also found that conservative accounts saw a similar drop in engagement when discussing political topics.
Meta's suppression of political content is the result of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's 2021 change of heart after years of being criticized by Republicans as a Democrat. Started pulling down political content on Facebook. Problems have befallen Instagram this year, with Meta announcing in a February blog post that it would now “actively encourage political content,” including topics that “may relate to the law, elections, social topics, etc.” I won't,'' he announced. This policy change was applied to all Meta platforms, including the newly released Threads app.
Meta claims this decision was made because users don't want to see too much politics overall, but the lack of transparency around when and how content is suppressed has left creators and Users are in a state of “algorithmic anxiety.” Meta declined to provide details about what it means by “political and social issues” or how its automated systems make these determinations. This ambiguity has led to confusion and frustration among users who feel their voices are being silenced.
read more of washington post here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News, covering free speech and online censorship issues.
