“This will reduce the real-time dissemination of potentially dangerous content during polls,” the statement added.
Facebook Inc’s Instagram announced Thursday that it is making changes to its image-sharing platform for U.S. users to prevent the spread of misinformation around the November 3 presidential election.
For users in the United States, Instagram will temporarily remove the “Recent” tab from hashtag pages starting Thursday, he said in a statement on Twitter.
“We are doing this to reduce the real-time dissemination of potentially harmful content that could appear around the elections,” the statement added.
Instagram’s “Recent” tab organizes hashtags in chronological order and amplifies content. Researchers have warned that automated amplification can lead to the rapid spread of disinformation on the platform.
This development comes as social media companies face increasing pressure to tackle election-related misinformation and prepare for the possibility of violence or intimidation from polling stations around the November 3 vote.
Earlier this month, Twitter Inc. said it would remove tweets calling on people to interfere with the U.S. electoral process or the implementation of election results, including through violence.
Twitter recently announced several temporary measures to slow the amplification of content: for example, from October 20 until at least the end of US election week, users around the world who tap “retweet” will first be directed to the “quote tweet” button to encourage people to add their own comments.
Twitter said it would also stop showing hot topics without additional context. His decision to curb automated recommendations contrasts with Facebook’s approach, which had previously boosted the promotion of its group product.
Separately on Thursday, Facebook admitted that a technical error in its systems had caused a number of Republican and Democratic party announcements to be paused.
This was the result of a policy change announced last month by Facebook to block new political ads the week before the election. Facebook said it has made updates to enable the relevant ads to show.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
