Adam Mosseri, the head of Top Meta, stated in a message on the new social network Threads that there was no place for the "negativity" of news and politics. Mosseri, the mind behind Instagram and the companion site Threads, reported that any profit made from political and news content didn't balance out the "scrutiny" and potential moral risks. His remarks came at a time when Meta is attempting to avoid paying news outlets for their content in both Europe and North America.
Meta's new Threads app has been live for less than two days, but one of the company's top executives believes that the drawbacks of prioritizing news and political discourse on the platform outweigh any apparent business and "platform" upside. Adam Mosseri, who oversees both Instagram and the text-based, Instagram-powered Threads, made the commentary in an unusually candid post on the new social network on Friday. "Politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads - they have on Instagram as well to some extent - but we're not going to do anything to encourage those verticals," he wrote in a response to a reporter's question about Threads replacing Twitter for news industry professionals. Mosseri continued, "Politics and hard news are important. But my take is, from a platform's perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let's be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them." Meta representatives did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment on whether Meta would downrank news or political content on Threads as the company has done on other platforms.
Mosseri's comment came even as Meta fights to prevent governments from forcing the company to pay newsrooms for the content that Meta leverages for advertisements and engagement. For example, in Canada, new legislation would require Meta to pay money to Canadian newsrooms, something that would cost both Google and Meta an estimated $329 million Canadian dollars against billions of advertising revenue. In response, Meta blocked Canadian outlets from appearing on Meta and Instagram search results, a restriction that would presumably apply to Threads if the platform's search functionality is expanded. Google implemented a similar restriction shortly after. Meta employed the same technique in Australia when a similar law was passed in 2022.
Despite the unraveling of Twitter under Elon Musk's ownership — something which Mosseri has conceded was an impetus behind the launch of Threads — government agencies, politicians, and journalists depend on the platform to disseminate breaking news and emergency notifications. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.
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