Instagram Creators: Check If Your Posts Are 'Political'

Following Instagram's February 9, 2024 policy change limiting proactive recommendation of "political" content to non-followers, The Markup examined how the platform's broad definition, content "likely to mention governments, elections, or social topics that affect a group of people and/or society at large," is applied in practice. It found that only professional accounts, which have access to Instagram's Account Status and Insights tools, can check whether their own posts have been flagged as political, leaving ordinary users with no way to verify or contest a classification.

Testing on The Markup's own professional account turned up no recently flagged posts, underscoring how little insight even accessible tools provide into the classifier's actual behavior. The piece treats the investigation as a starting point rather than a conclusive study, inviting creators to submit examples of flagged posts, and concludes that Instagram's political-content system remains opaque in application despite the company's public definition, leaving affected creators uncertain about what limits their reach.