{"id":307,"date":"2024-11-06T20:49:51","date_gmt":"2024-11-06T20:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/semicollar.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/06\/were-bad-bunny-and-ricky-martin-really-shadow-banned-by-instagram-and-x\/"},"modified":"2024-11-09T17:35:07","modified_gmt":"2024-11-09T17:35:07","slug":"were-bad-bunny-and-ricky-martin-really-shadow-banned-by-instagram-and-x","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/semicollar.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/06\/were-bad-bunny-and-ricky-martin-really-shadow-banned-by-instagram-and-x\/","title":{"rendered":"Were Bad Bunny and Ricky Martin really shadow banned by Instagram and X?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the lead-up to the election, allegations are flying that social media platforms have been \u201cshadow banning,\u201d or in some way filtering the political content of, celebrities. After multiple Latine stars spoke out<\/a> against the racism and misogyny on display<\/a> at last week\u2019s Madison Square Garden rally, Ricky Martin posted an Instagram Story claiming<\/a> that the platform was blocking a post he\u2019d published on the subject. Users also speculated<\/a> that their access<\/a> to other public figures who posted about the rally, including Bad Bunny, was being somehow restricted. Add these musicians to a long list of users who say they\u2019ve been shadow banned. These include Bella Hadid<\/a>, who claimed in 2022 that the platform penalized her for posts about Palestine, and sources for a recent Washington Post<\/a> investigation who claimed Instagram throttled their political content.<\/p>\n

Claims of political post suppression have been made for years, but the idea that a platform would be censoring this content right before a deeply consequential election is alarming. Is it true?<\/p>\n

Well, yes and no. Instagram and its text platform, Threads, have claimed<\/a> in the past and continue to claim that they don\u2019t shadow ban specific people. \u201cOur policies are designed to give everyone a voice while at the same time keeping our platforms safe,\u201d Meta\u2019s Public Affairs Director Dani Lever told Vox in an email. \u201cWe\u2019re currently enforcing these policies during a fast-moving, highly polarized, and intense election and we readily acknowledge errors can be made, but any implication that we deliberately and systemically suppress a particular voice is false.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, Instagram head Adam Mosseri detailed<\/a> the many moving parts that go into determining how a post gets ranked, curated, and served to users on a platform, including, he said, \u201cthousands\u201d of \u201csignals\u201d of user preferences, including what users like, information about the post and who posted it, and how interested you are in the person who made it. This criteria varies from user to user, and it\u2019s constantly in flux.<\/p>\n

Instagram\u2019s complicated system of ranking content involves another operation of filtering content as well. Previous reporting<\/a> has indicated that Instagram and Threads do remove and filter out content, including covertly restricting individual accounts and their content from search results \u2014 the oldest commonly understood meaning<\/a> of a shadow ban \u2014 as well as showing the posts to fewer users. That apparent contradiction may be why shadow ban discourse flared up again this past week.<\/p>\n

In addition, the political context \u2014 mere days away from an anxiety-inducing election \u2014 adds another layer of concern. The platform\u2019s current official policy<\/a> regarding politics is not to recommend any political content to users. \u201cOur goal is to preserve the ability for people to choose to interact with political content, while respecting each person\u2019s appetite for it,\u201d Mosseri said<\/a> earlier this year when the policy was announced.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have told us they want to see less political content on Facebook,\u201d Lever told Vox, \u201cso we have spent the last few years refining<\/a> our approach to reduce the amount of political content seen in Feed and other surfaces.\u201d<\/p>\n

Users can opt into being served political content if they want \u2014 which is good \u2014 but users who don\u2019t know they need to opt in first might go looking for political content and then get the wrong idea when they don\u2019t find it.<\/p>\n

Not only that, but in March, Instagram rolled out<\/a> a little-noticed but massive change to the way it displays hashtags across the site: It essentially erased real-time feeds altogether. Now, regardless of what tag you\u2019re searching for, you can no longer see posts made in real time on a universal feed. While you can still see posts that are recommended for you on the mobile app, you can\u2019t see everything. This, again, is another wrinkle that might make people think they\u2019re being targeted or that their posts are being hidden, when they\u2019re more likely just being lost in Meta\u2019s ineffable algorithmic approach to sourcing content.<\/p>\n

Given the polarized era we\u2019re in, all of these factors can create confusion. After all, Meta has<\/em> previously limited political content across all its platforms. In 2022, it issued an ad restriction<\/a> in the week prior to the election to squelch all political advertising from getting through, and it\u2019s conducting a similar restriction this week. (A recent Forbes investigation<\/a> found that prior to the current week-long ban on election advertising, the company has been profiting handily<\/a> from political Facebook advertising \u2014 even ads that spread rampant disinformation about the election.)<\/p>\n

Lever pointed out to Vox that the company had actually announced<\/a> its forthcoming approach to the elections a full year ago. \u201cWe very clearly stated that we would show people links to official information about how, when, and where to vote when they searched for terms related to the election on Facebook and Instagram,\u201d Lever told Vox. Still, the average Instagram user likely won\u2019t see missing content as part of a site-wide design; they may see it instead as an unfair ban on a specific piece of content or theme.<\/p>\n

Users\u2019 perceptions that their speech is being curtailed has become a running theme for Meta, as well as other platforms like Twitter, now known as X. Owner Elon Musk has frequently come under fire for allowing censorship and artificial amplification<\/a> of content on that platform, often at the behest of right-wing authoritarian governments<\/a>. (Vox has reached out to X for comment.) Under Musk, X has also been known to ban left-leaning users<\/a>, including journalists, from the platform despite the users having violated no site policies. All of this prior activity tends to feed the rumor mill in times of high anxiety and tension \u2014 like, say, days before an election. Even if X isn\u2019t filtering content, the perception that it must be can contribute to user backlash.<\/p>\n

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The problem of users believing they\u2019ve been shadow banned reflects larger tensions between tech and politics<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n

That leads us to another, perhaps more ominous, problem. Increasingly, the prominent moguls at the helms of these platforms seem willing to bend the knee to Donald Trump. Some tech entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong may be hedging their bets<\/a> in anticipation of a Trump election win. Musk has made it clear<\/a> that he is a Trump fan, but that\u2019s not necessarily the case with Mark Zuckerberg, with whom Trump has had a famously tense relationship over the years.<\/p>\n

Following the January 6 insurrection,<\/a> Facebook and Twitter both banned Trump<\/a> from their platforms, which left the former president thoroughly disgruntled, with Zuckerberg in particular. That March, on TruthSocial, he indicated<\/a> his intent to protect TikTok in the face of attempts by US politicians to ban the platform \u2014 solely because TikTok is Facebook\u2019s biggest competitor. Trump followed that up by threatening<\/a> to put Zuckerberg in prison if he filtered Trump-related content from Facebook.<\/p>\n

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Trump\u2019s statements are in line with a long litany of threats he\u2019s made against his enemies across politics<\/a>, the media<\/a>, and Silicon Valley<\/a> if he were to win office. Additionally, Congress has shown a willingness<\/a> to investigate social media platforms<\/a> when they\u2019re displeased by alleged content restrictions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The tensions between Trump and Meta seem to be thawing, however, as Meta has been giving progressively more face to Trump. Zuckerberg restored Trump\u2019s access<\/a> to Facebook and Instagram in 2023 after a two-year ban. He also praised Trump<\/a> for his bravery following a July assassination attempt<\/a>, and called<\/a> him after the incident. While Trump had previously referred to Zuckerberg as an \u201cenemy of the people,\u201d<\/a> that vibe has shifted; on a recent podcast interview, Trump claimed he likes Zuckerberg \u201cmuch better now.\u201d<\/a> Facebook has denied<\/a> Trump\u2019s claim<\/a> that Zuckerberg went one further and implied he would be voting for Trump in the election.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not hard to see that in a scenario where tech CEOs are falling in line<\/a> to pay their dues to Trump in case he wins the election, the end user is the one who loses out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the lead-up to the election, allegations are flying that social media platforms have been \u201cshadow banning,\u201d or in some way filtering the political content of, celebrities. After multiple Latine stars spoke out against the racism and misogyny on display at last week\u2019s Madison Square Garden rally, Ricky Martin posted an Instagram Story claiming that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/semicollar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/semicollar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/semicollar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semicollar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semicollar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/semicollar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313,"href":"https:\/\/semicollar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions\/313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semicollar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/semicollar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semicollar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semicollar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}