Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is stepping away from politics, which is a big change from how it handled elections in the past and might have a big effect on the 2024 US presidential election. Facebook engagement for both the Trump and Biden campaigns dropped by 60% between 2020 and 2024, according to a study of their posts.
According to The Washington Post, Facebook and Instagram’s parent corporation, Meta, is significantly altering its attitude toward politics on its platforms as the 2024 presidential contest between incumbent President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump heats up. After years of courting the political world, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced, “We enabled millions of people to connect with politicians so they could hear from them directly and be better educated.” This change in strategy comes after Zuckerberg’s previous boast of Facebook’s influence in the 2016 election.
Following its partial guilt for enabling users to plan the January 6 activities, the corporation started to shift its stance on politics. Within three weeks following the event, Zuckerberg informed investors, “People do not want politics and conflict to take over their experience on our platforms.”
Politicians have long relied on the targeting system, but the firm has curtailed it, tightened regulations on political advertisers, and decreased the visibility of content and accounts with a political theme. Both the Biden and Trump campaigns have seen a 60% reduction in average interaction per Facebook post between March 2020 and March 2024 and double-digit declines on Instagram as a result of these changes, according to a Post study.
Spokesman for Meta Dani Lever justified the modifications, saying, “People told us they wanted more controls and less political content, therefore, that is what we are trying to impact.” Everybody is using this method, which is based on years of work.
Leading Trump campaign advisor Chris LaCivita said, “People should be concerned, and Congress should have questions,” comparing Meta’s retreat from politics to a kind of shadow banning. In my opinion, Big Tech would be insane if they believed that Republicans would be unconcerned with them encroaching on the territory of natural political expression.
Some experts are doubting the effects of this change, including Natalie Stroud, a professor of social media studies at the University of Texas at Austin. It’s just a fascinating time. There appears to be only one pattern between social media news and politics, which begs the question, “Where will people go for this information?” Or will they simply forego it?
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