Instagram is making a controversial change that will divide users

Fast Facts

• Meta has added political filtering to Instagram and Threads.
• It auto-defaults to filtering political content out of your feeds.
• The feature will also come to Facebook later this year.

While some election years are more tumultuous than others, this one is shaping up to be a real banger.

With people fiercely divided between Joe Biden and Donald Trump's ideologies, the race will likely be tight, not to mention supercharged with emotion.

Related: Why these leaked Meta images need a second look

Political discussion on social media has easily been one of the most difficult issues to address, with lots of ugly words being spewed at strangers on a nearly constant basis — and now Meta  (META)  has a solution for Instagram and Threads users.

The social media company has announced that political content will no longer appear in people's suggested Instagram posts in Explore, Reels, Feed Recommendations, and Suggested Users. It doesn't affect who you follow, however, so if you follow political influencers, you will still see those posts.

Meta has also said this change will come to Facebook at a later date.

Moving away from political content on Meta's platforms has been an ongoing initiative which the company last addressed on its official blog in Feb. 2024, saying, "...we’re extending our existing approach to how we treat political content – we won’t proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads."

If you dislike this change, however, there's a way to get around it. You can access your Settings within the Instagram app and go to Suggested Content, where there is now a toggle for political content. This feature will also be available on Facebook when the update is rolled out there.

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