Can Meta maintain its planned political distance in the upcoming election campaign?

Apparently, this is a question that even those within the company are now debating, following a weekend in which political news dominated the headlines.

In the wake of President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from his re-election campaign, many pointed to the fact that Biden first posted his announcement on X as an endorsement of the app’s enduring relevance for mass communication.

Despite reports of slow to no growth at X since Elon Musk took over at the app, it inarguably remains a relevant source of real-time news content, though it also worth noting that Biden re-posted the same announcement on Threads just 2 minutes after posting on X.

Which is also an important note, as to the rising relevance of Meta’s year old Twitter replica app. The fact that the President felt the need to re-share his announcement to Threads suggests that Threads is gaining traction, yet Meta’s intentional throttling of political content is also hurting it in this respect.

As reported by The Information, Biden’s announcement gained almost a million likes on X within a day of posting, but saw only 12k likes in the same period on Threads. Which, again, is no surprise, given that Meta has said that it doesn’t want to “proactively amplify political content from accounts you don’t follow” in the app.

Meta has tried to soften that stance somewhat, by noting that it’s not stopping people from following accounts that share political content, and any of those posts will still be displayed in your “Following” feed. But the fact that a major political announcement like this gained so little traction on Threads does seem potentially problematic, and even ignorant in a sense, as the Threads algorithm showcases Hollywood gossip and random memes, even as major, impactful events are unfolding in the political arena.

But it’s also not a variable equation. If Meta’s committed to showing less political news content, it can’t then turn off that switch to allow certain political stories to filter through. What Meta wants to avoid is divisive political posts, which many users have reportedly told Meta that they don’t want to see.

Indeed, back in 2021, shortly after the Capitol Riots, which Facebook was again blamed for playing a role in, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that:

“One of the top pieces of feedback we’re hearing from our community right now is that people don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services.”

The Capitol Riots was the trigger point that sparked Meta’s teams to explore culling politics completely from its apps, which is what’s now led to its new stance, but if Threads, in particular, wants to succeed, and supersede X as the real-time platform of choice, it may well need to re-think this approach, as reflected by Biden’s announcement.

And despite Meta’s insistence that it wants Threads to be different, X is most definitely its target.

As noted by Instagram and Threads chief Adam Mosseri in a recent interview:

“I want to build the best platform for sharing ideas online. That means getting bigger than Twitter or X. That will take some time, but I will consider it a failure if we don't get there.” 

So while Meta doesn’t want Threads to replicate the angst and toxicity of Twitter and X, it does want to compete. And now, the question is, can it actually do so while also suppressing certain topics.

To be clear, I fully understand Meta’s motivation for moving away from politics on Instagram and Facebook.

Facebook in particular has been a political whipping boy for both sides whenever the results don’t go their way, while Zuckerberg himself has also been demonized as a heartless capitalist, hell-bent on success, no matter the cost, as a result of political influence operations in his apps.

At the same time, news publishers around the world have been trying to essentially extort Meta for the use of their content, and despite Meta’s assertions that it simply doesn’t need them like they seem to think, it has also ended up paying out millions in certain regions due to political pressure.

You can see, then, why Meta wants to get away from politics entirely, and the rise of short form video has changed the tide in Meta’s favor.

After TikTok showed a new way to approach recommendations, which isn’t reliant on each users’ established social graph, Meta followed its lead, and now, almost all of the engagement gains on both Facebook and IG have come via extended viewing time consuming Reels content.

You’ve likely played into this yourself, with Meta gradually upping the amount of video content that it’s displaying in-stream, from Pages that you don’t follow, in order to suck you in with clips from old TV shows, celebrity “then and now” clips, memes, etc.

In February, Meta reported that 40% of the content that people see on Instagram now comes via AI recommendations, while also noting that, over the past year, its AI recommendations have driven a 7% increase in time spent on Facebook, and a 6% increase in the same on IG.

As such, Meta really doesn’t need politics in either app, it’s now doing just fine without it.

But that same approach, I would argue, simply can’t apply to Threads.

Again, the ideal would be for Meta to avoid the more divisive political debates, while still covering the big political news stories. That’s probably not possible in an algorithmic sense, but essentially, on days like this Monday past, Threads’ trending topics can’t afford not to show what’s clearly the biggest focus of discussion.

This was Threads Trending Topics listing after the Biden announcement. That’s probably not going to keep people aligned to the app, as they’ll just go elsewhere to catch up with the latest news.

Which is the real risk. Every time Threads’ aversion to politics becomes a “head in the sand” moment, people will simply head back to X to get the latest.

In this sense, Threads could actually be fueling X usage, by failing as an alternative. And the more it tries to avoid the obvious, especially in the upcoming election season, the more this will be highlighted as a failure of its potential.

It’s interesting to note that Meta is now considering this internally, because it does seem clear that if Threads is to succeed, it can’t avoid more challenging content, whatever that may be.

There are rules and guidelines around what can be shared, but within those parameters, Threads may need to simply let things play out, in order to maximize its opportunity.