A quiet change to Instagram's content preferences overnight is raising eyebrows and outcry about "Big Tech interference" as parent company Meta claims the settings reset is merely an "error" that will, at some point, be "fixed."
The universal change switched all users' choice on whether to limit or not limit political content to the default which prevents users from seeing such content from accounts they don't already follow. What's more, even if users changed their preference back to allow political content into their feeds and then quit the app, the setting would again revert to its "limit" default.
A Meta spokesperson said the changes "should not have happened" — after users pointed out the changes — and stated that the company is "working" on fixing the issue.
Meanwhile, days before the first presidential debate, Meta says it was an error that everyone's Instagram settings was automatically changed to limit political content (without notification) https://t.co/vHwUD2FEbW
— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) June 26, 2024
But the timing of what Meta is saying was merely a glitch of some sort just one day before President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump face each other in a debate raised suspicions.
Perhaps the biggest political event of the 2024 cycle so far, Thursday night's CNN debate is sure to generate loads of content and likely plenty of clips of Biden's diminished abilities. With the changes made to Instagram users' content preferences, most of those videos would not be able to go viral or reach a broad user base.
Amid the White House's botched "cheap fakes" response to recent videos of Biden at the White House's Juneteenth concert and at the G7 in Italy, the timing of Instagram's change to limit the reach of political content seems even more convenient.
🚨Wow. One day before the presidential debate and Instagram is hiding political content from users.
— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) June 26, 2024
Corrupt Big Tech interference strikes once again.
Why don’t they want Americans to see content from the debate between President Trump and Biden? pic.twitter.com/M9OV3oHQZs
As The Verge noted in its report on Instagram's supposedly erroneous settings reset, the opt-out setting for political content was introduced in March. At the time, Meta argued the ability to limit the amount of political content they're served somehow wasn't actually limiting political content from reaching people but "instead simply giving users the ability to stop seeing posts that don't interest them."