On Friday, Meta announced that it will not be recommending anything it determines to be “political content” on its platforms, Instagram and Threads (and this will later kick in for Facebook as well).
“Political content” includes laws, elections, or social topics. Posts and accounts related to such topics will not be shown on the Explore page or as Suggested posts/accounts — which is where you might find new accounts to engage with or follow.
It’s already kicked in - a friend of mine had her post “flagged” while trying to share something about the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Let’s unpack this.
Firstly, what the actual fuck.
This makes me SO mad.
How dare they try to shut us down like this? Who do they think they are to limit our opinions on our own profiles? What makes them think they can decide for us what kind of content we want to consume?
I want to scream and rage and hurl things through the window.
I won’t, because a) my neighbors might get mad, and b) then I’d have to fix the window.
But secondly, I’m not surprised.
This is how people in power control the narratives. This is how they keep us “playing nice”, in our boxes and falling in line.
So what does this actually mean?
I don’t know why (well, I have some ideas but that’s for another post) but politics has long been treated as a dirty word, a topic to be avoided in polite company.
Strange, because the word ‘politics’ originates from the Greek term politiká (Πολιτικά), which simply means 'affairs of the cities'.
Nothing sordid or unspeakable about it, really. As members of cities, should we not be concerned with the affairs of them? Should we not speak about them with other members of our ‘cities’?
Indeed we should.
Now, you may not know this but I have a wholeass degree in Political Science. I know, wild. Since I was about 17, I’ve been interested in politics.
Or rather, I’ve been curious about why a small group of random people gets to decide our lives for us, how they end up being the “chosen ones”, what influences the decisions they make, and basically, the basis for organizing our social (as in ‘our interactions with other people in society’, not ‘going out and getting drunk’) lives.
Really, when we think about it — Meta’s decision to stop promoting political content is very odd.
In fact, it is reminiscent of Singapore’s way of doing things a la POFMA and FICA and a bunch of other laws that are purposely broad and vague and overreaching, supposedly to “protect” us and our delicate “peace and harmony” but in reality, merely serves to stifle any sort of discourse or discussion about how our lives are run.
Because everything is political.
What do I mean?
Well.
Ha, I don’t even know where to start.
No, like honestly.
If you think about it for two seconds, you’ll see that just about everything in our lives is political.
And if so, what IS going to be allowed by Meta?
Let’s do some examples.
You post a picture of your city and there’s an unhoused person in it. Oops, the lack of affordable housing is a political issue.
You post a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for medical bills for your best friend’s cancer treatment — oops, the lack of accessible healthcare is a political issue.
You post a picture of your kid’s graduation class in high school, how lovely! Wait, why is there only one Black kid in the whole class? Oops, that’s a race and education issue, it’s political.
You post a picture of the fall leaves — surely that’s not political?? Oh, it’s only July, that’s a sign of climate change and you guessed it. Political issue.
Okay, maybe some of these are a bit of a stretch but my point is, if you start thinking about things even just a little bit, it becomes painfully obvious that EVERYTHING is political.
From the clothes we wear (fast fashion is unsustainable in the long run and underpaid low-wage workers are being exploited in countries around the world) to the food we eat (farming subsidies harm people and the planet), everything has to do with politics.
Education. Crime rates. Healthcare. Immigration. Rising sea levels. Inflation. (Un)employment. Collapse of economies. Declining birth rates. Wars. Even yes, genocide.
Everything is political.
When we start recognizing that there is little that concerns us that is not political, the decision by Meta, the largest social media company to control sharing political content on its platforms, starts to feel really suspicious.
Why don’t they want us to be sharing “political content”?
Is it a bad thing if we’re advocating for human rights?
Is it so terrible if we’re sharing information about the unhoused population in our cities?
Who stands to gain if we stop talking about Taylor Swift’s 10-minute plane rides in her private jets?
Whose interests are sidelined?
Who suffers?
The thing is, it starts like this.
They’ll tell us not to post political content and we obey.
Because we enjoy social media — it gives us a bit of a mental break from our lousy jobs that we work too hard and don’t earn enough at — or because we use social media to build our little businesses and we can’t afford to lose access to the couple of thousand people who follow us.
So we shut up.
We cease firing off posts about genocide in Gaza. We stop posting about the displaced people in Sudan. We shut up about DR Congo. We quit talking about the right to abortion and never mention climate change ever again. Cost of living crisis? Never heard of it.
We hope that we’ll be able to make a living and keep going, doing our own small little things. We hope that we’ll make enough to get by, have enough to pay the bills and maybe even take a vacation. We hope that we’ll be okay.
But darling, don’t you see?
All along, they’re herding us into ever smaller boxes. And as long as we happily go, we’ll never be free to roam the pastures like we were meant to.
We’ve gone off into a bit of a weird metaphor here, but I hope my point is clear.
Everything is political.
And if you don’t see it, it’s because you choose not to.
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