Meta’s new setting Shadow bans politics from Instagram and Threads.

Meta’s executives have been saying for some time that they don’t want to promote political posts on the app. Instagram and Threads now have an opt-out setting to limit recommendations of “political content.”

You can find them in your Instagram “Content Preferences” account settings. This will enable ‘Restrict political content from people you don’t follow’ by default. This setting also applies to Threads since that app shares its account system with Instagram.

Meta configures this new setting as good for user choice and does not limit the reach of political content from accounts people choose to follow, the company says. The change was first announced in early February, but Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed: The Verge It began rolling out widely last week. As of Monday, the company had not sent out an in-app notification letting people know it was turned on by default.

If you talk to the folks at Meta about why they hate political recommendations, you’ll hear that they don’t think most people want to see politics in their feeds. But last year, Instagram president Adam Mosseri spoke with me on Threads and explained the company’s motivations more directly.

He said at the time, “Politics and hard news are important,” and “I don’t want to give it any other meaning.” “But my view is that from a platform’s perspective, the incremental engagement or revenue they might generate is simply not worth the scrutiny, negativity (let’s be honest), or integrity risk that comes with it.”

So there it is. Meta does not want the backlash that comes from its role in actively surfacing political content, which it defines as posts about “government,” “elections,” and “social topics.” It is likely that the intention is to provide a lot of room for variation in what can be included in this policy. If you don’t want Meta to make these calls about what it recommends to you, it’s time to change your settings.