Meta’s Revised Political Content Approach Could Benefit Threads

So, at Meta’s again cool with political contentwith the company looking to refocus its moderation approach around free speech, allowing users to discuss a wider range of topics, without fear of restrictions, in their apps.

Today, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has too announced that Meta will switch to a Community Notes-style model, putting more control in the hands of its user communities to decide what is and isn’t acceptable in its apps.

Which is likely to be a disaster, in terms of facilitating the spread of misinformation and false claims (based on Experience X), though it could also give a boost to Threads, Meta’s Twitter-like real-time social app.

One of the most restrictive elements of Threads so far has been the restrictions on what is and isn’t available, with Meta actively restricting anything it deems “political” content.

Indeed, last February, Threads released a political content switcherwhich is included by default:

And unless you specifically turn this off, Threads’ referral systems limit your exposure to content and profiles related to political topics.

Which was in accordance with Metin broadens the approach in reducing the impact of political discussion on its app, although it’s never really explained what qualifies as “political” in this context, and how it’s trying to reframe the conversation on the app in a more positive way, avoiding certain types of speech.

Regardless, on election day last year, it was clear Threads was not the best app to keep up with the latest news.

Many users instead returned to X to keep up with the latest news, while Bluesky saw a sudden surge in interest as people became aware of the restrictions Meta had put in place to limit political exposure.

I mean, when there’s an election and the top “Trending” story on Threads is cute dogs, it’s probably not serving its purpose, or at least, the purpose Twitter exiles might expect.

The subsequent rise of Bluesky prompted a flurry of activity at Threads HQ copy Bluesky’s lineswhile Threads was also surveying users about restrictions on political contentand whether they would prefer a more impartial approach.

And now, with Meta looking to better align with the incoming Trump administration and address concerns about political censorship, Threads will be free to feature more political content anyway, which could improve its value as a stream of real-time breaking news and information.

And maybe it could even end up being the thing that Threads overcomes.

Which would be somewhat ironic, since following Elon Musk’s lead in X could see Meta’s own replicant app become the dominant platform of its kind.

Fate loves irony, as Elon likes to say.

And Threads is already on the way, with 300 million active monthly users, and 100 million per day. That’s compared to X’s 500 million MAUsand 250 million daily applications. So it still has some catching up to do, but Threads is taking off, and at current growth rates, it could surpass X in the first half of this year, in terms of usage.

Even if the wider effects of his change in moderation will be negative.

The main problem with Community Notes on X is that notes, added by users, require the consensus of people of opposing political views to be displayed.

This means that many notes never see the light of day, because there will never be an inter-political agreement on some issues.

Rather, according to analysis conducted by the Center for Combating Digital Hate (CCDH).), 73% of notes related to political topics are never displayed, despite providing valuable context.

You can see in this chart the topics most likely to fail on this front, and it’s no surprise that things like election interference will never gain the support of people on both sides of the ideological aisle.

This will remain a significant flaw for the next four years, as President Trump makes misleading, unsubstantiated, personally motivated claims that his supporters will take as indisputable truth and his opponents will disagree with.

In fact, what will likely happen on Threads is the opposite of X, in that false claims critical of Trump and his statements will gain traction because the Meta community annotation system will not see them flagged or flagged as such due to the lack of inter-party agreement.

So we could really end up with a pro-Trump echo chamber on X and an anti-Trump discussion group on Threads. But either way, the result will be the spread of more misinformation, confusion and untruths due to reliance on a flawed fact-checking system.

But for Threads, it could also provide more real-time updates. And if it can also continue to improve the product and meet user demands, that could be the thing that pushes it to the next level.