“Not Worth Scrutiny, Negativity Or Integrity Risks” – Deadline

Meta launched Threads this week which is their response to Twitter and in many ways both platforms want to host digital town squares. However, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri is clearing things up and saying that the social network will not push topics about politics and hard news.

In the past few years, Meta has made a U-turn on pushing politics and hard news on their social networks, which was something pointed out being that Twitter has embraced the political talk and encourages it.

“The goal isn’t to replace Twitter,” Mosseri shared on Threads. “The goal is to create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less angry place for conversations, but not all of Twitter.”

Mosseri acknowledges that politics and hard news will inevitably show up on the platform “but we’re not going to do anything to encourage those verticals.”

Another user pointed out that if Threads wants to be a “public square” it would be counter-productive dowranking that content to which Mosseri replied, “We won’t discourage or down-rank news or politics, we just won’t court them the way we have in the past.”

Mosseri said that they don’t want to repeat the mistakes Facebook made in the past by being “too quick to promise too much” to the media industry.

The Instagram boss noted that “politics and hard news are important” but “from a platform’s perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let’s be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.”

Mosseri continued, “There are more than enough amazing communities — sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment, etc — to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news.”

Meta claims to already have surpassed 70M users on Threads. The signup is easy as all it takes is an Instagram account and users are automatically signed up to the new platform.