Meta’s Plans To Downplay Political Content Is, Itself, A Political Decision

Politics is messy, and you get the feeling that a lot of internet companies want nothing to do with politics" of any kind. Back in 2019 Twitter (when it was still Twitter) decided to ban all political ads, a near-impossible task guaranteed to make a mess of things (such as banning get out the vote" ads). Soon after, both Google and Facebook (when it was still Facebook) also cut back on political ads.

This was always interesting, because it disproves the idea that companies will do anything for revenue. The constant political fighting made it seem too much of a hassle to make money this way, so it was easier to just claim that all such ads were blocked.

But, there's a big problem with this approach - as we saw with the trouble with the ad bans earlier: how the hell do you define what's political"? Sure, some politics" is obvious. Things about politicians running for office? Easy call. But it gets more and more difficult as things go.

Is an ad about the environment political? About healthcare? Libraries? In some contexts, yes. In others, maybe not?

We're debating this again as Meta keeps insisting that it will not promote political" content on Threads (which is sort of what would happen if Twitter and Instagram had a lovechild, where you might be surprised which genes the offspring got from which parent app). From early on Threads/Instagram boss Adam Mosseri has made it clear that he doesn't want the site to be big for political content.

That's gotten more attention in the last few weeks as the company said it's tuning its algorithm to downplay political content (though you can opt back into it, if you want it).

But that leaves open the same question we discussed above: how the hell do they define political" content? As you move outside of the ads space, it gets even more complicated. These days, your choice of food products or clothing can be considered political. What books you buy? What music you like? Where you live? All of them are possibly political. People's very identities are often politicized.

How do you downplay your identity?

Many people have been asking, but Meta's response to most reporters has been evasive. The company has now given a little more guidance to the Washington Post, but I'm not sure it helps much:

So far, the company has offered only clues about where it will draw those lines. In a blog post announcing the policy, Instagram described political content as potentially related to things like laws, elections, or social topics." Laws and elections seem clear-cut enough, as categories go, but social topics" leaves a lot of room for guesswork.

In a statement to The Tech 202, Meta spokeswoman Claire Lerner offered a bit more detail.

Social topics can include content that identifies a problem that impacts people and is caused by the action or inaction of others, which can include issues like international relations or crime," she said. She added that Meta will work continually to refine its definition over time.

Got that? It's potentially related to things like laws, elections or social topics" where social topics is content that identifies a problem that impacts people and is caused by the action or inaction of others." Though this definition may need to be refined" over time.

Yeah, so, that doesn't clear up much of anything. Indeed it's about as clear as mud.

Now, some of this is the very nature of content moderation. It is a constant game of taking wholly subjective rules about what is and what is not allowed, and having to apply them in a manner that pretends to be objective. It's not possible to do well at scale.

But, based on this, it sounds like anything around climate change, mental health, poverty, housing, traffic, etc. could all be deemed political." Of course, it's not clear to me that things like banning books in schools and libraries quite meet this definition? What about talking about the First Amendment? Or the Second Amendment? Or the Fourteenth.

Is a discussion about hospital billing political? \_()_/

The reality is that the politics here is in the deciding. By announcing that it will downplay political content, Meta is just shifting the issue. Rather than worrying about people fighting over politics on Threads (which will still happen), now they can also fight over Meta's ever-evolving definition of what content is, and is not, political.

The very act of promising to downplay political content is, inherently, political content itself.

I can understand the desire to cut politics out as a platform, but it's hard to see how this works in any reasonable way in practice. There are always politics around, and Meta is opening itself up to widespread criticism no matter how it defines politics, because each such decision will now be a political one - not by Meta's users, but by Meta itself.