The app had previously favoured original content in its 'stories' feature over existing, re-shared posts, but will now give them equal treatment.
Instagram has announced that the platform will be making changes to the way it displays content after receiving accusations of censoring Palestine-related content during the latest wave of violence in Gaza.
The company, which has denied ever targeting Palestinian activists, has said the new algorithm no longer differentiates between original content and re-shared posts that users choose for its “stories” feature.
The “stories” feature on Instagram was built according to an algorithm that favours original content as opposed to existing and re-shared posts. Therefore, any Palestine-related content that was shared from other accounts was pushed lower in the Instagram feed.
A company spokeswoman said the logic for prioritising original posts was that most Instagram users had more stories to follow than time to check them – and the company believed people were “more interested in original stories from their closest friends”.
“It’s also caused people to believe we were suppressing stories about particular topics or points of view. We want to be really clear – this isn’t the case,” she said.
“This applied to any post that’s re-shared in stories, no matter what it’s about.”
Instagram said that according to the old algorithm, posts about certain viewpoints appeared to be suppressed but that this was an unintended side-effect of the way the algorithm was established rather than an intentional attempt to censor this particular content.
This comes after thousands of Palestine-related posts were deleted from the platform and much pro-Palestinian content on social media was found to carry warnings.
Under the new scheme, which Instagram said it would introduce gradually, all posts and stories will be treated equally. This means that the app will not favour original content over re-shared posts.
