Meredith Taylor: Ahead of the 20-24 election, a new update to a social media platform might make users see political content in a whole new light. NCCs Emma Poper is live from the studio to tell us how people are reacting to this sudden change on their feed.
Emma Poper: Social media giant, Instagram, has without many people’s knowledge started to censor political content on your recommended feed. Meaning that if you do not follow a political figure their content will not be pushed to your feed as a default setting. This censorship could significantly affect younger generations’ views on politics. Syracuse University Student Sarah Peters says that young people find most of their political news on social media.
Sarah Peters: I don’t think we, especially young people, are going to go out of our way to find it through maybe news sources or something.
Emma Poper: Syracuse resident Michelle Szautner says that she would turn off censorship on her Instagram feed to get fresh perspectives.
Michelle Szautner: Bombarded with all the same stories it would be the same view always coming through.
Emma Poper: To turn off Instagram censorship users can go to their Instagram profile, then to their settings, scroll down to ‘What you see’ and tap your ‘Content preferences’ from there users can select ‘Political Content’ to see two different options. The default is to ‘Limit political content from people you don’t follow’ or users can select the option ‘Don’t Limit political content from people you don’t follow’. Live from the studio Emma Poper NCC News.
Syracuse, N.Y. (NCC News) – Social media giant, Instagram, has without many users’ knowledge started to censor political content on your recommended feed. This feature has been added to users settings automatically and could limit users access to political candidate’s messaging.
The new feature causes users to have their feed limited to political accounts that they follow. Users will no longer be able to go on their discover page and be recommended political content without turning off this new feature.
This censorship could significantly affect younger generations’ views on politics. Young people find most of their political news on social media and without social media they may not find the political news they are looking for says Syracuse University student Sarah Peters, “I don’t think we, especially young people, are going to go of our way to find it through news sources.”
Syracuse resident Michelle Szautner says that people should have access to new and fresh perspectives that they may not share instead of being, “bombarded with all the same stories.”
To turn off Instagram censorship users can go to their Instagram profile, then to their settings, scroll down to ‘What you see’ and tap your ‘Content preferences’ from there users can select ‘Political Content’ to see two different options. The default is to ‘Limit political content from people you don’t follow’ or users can select the option ‘Don’t Limit political content from people you don’t follow’.
