Instagram blocked searches for #democrats and other political hashtags

My wife just checked. Its now showing some pretty heinous things on the demo crat side...I dont think prior to the election that would have been tolerated. They definitely changed the "algorithm".

Roughly a week ago Insta started hitting me hard with right-wing memes and creationist bullshit.
- YouTube is now showing nothing but (tr)ump stuff....I have not looked at dump stuff on YouTube. It's all positive on him too.
- Same. I get ads from all kinds of wackos: zionists, creationists, prosperity gospel, etc. The "sponsored" posts are nonstop disinformation.
Yeah the unspecified "issue" is probably that the blocklist was not a shadow ban but blatantly obvious. They probably only unblocked direct searches for these keywords. Wanna bet posts containing any of the listed keywords are still either removed from all other feeds or at least deranked in the great algoritm?

Oligarchs control the network for their benefit. Free and open souce alternatives are the only option.

Free speech my ass.

Thankfully the fediverse is tolerant of people with descenting opinions.

- I'm glad everyone is missing my irony lol.
  Also fucking grammar nazi (apology accepted)
- In my opinion, you're a worthless blight on humanity we're better off without.
  But that can't be wrong, can it? It's an opinion, and my right to it is also the same thing as a right to be correct.
- Opinions are often based on premises or observations or claimed facts, which are sometimes very objectively wrong.
  I get what you're complaining about but the 'sanctity of opinion' isn't a strong argument.
tolerant
Really? Try making a post supporting conservatism or attacking socialism and see how that goes for you. Most likely it'll get down voted to oblivion, and in many communities mods will remove it. And it doesn't really matter if it's a high quality post either with tons of scholarly sources and whatnot.
The Fediverse is tolerant of leftists and progressives, and a bit less tolerant of libertarians. If there's any hint of conservatism or centrism, the veneer of tolerance disappears.
I don't know the solution here, but I think allowing users to choose their moderation is a piece of it.
- It's the paradox of intolerance.
  Conservatives are generally intolerant nowadays, towards marginalized people.
  It's ok to be intolerant of intolerance.
- They can start their own instance. Away from ours. No need to tolerate intolerance. We don't need that shit here. Just because its open does not mean we want right wingers to wipe their shit on the walls. They can start their own instance in the fediverse and wipe shit on the walls there in their own little community. 🤷
- I guess the solution is for people with conservative values to stop associating so freely with subjugation addicts? Once conservative identity is dissociated from a wide spectrum of racist and classist bullshit, not to mention that we are entering an extinction level event of our own doing, then maybe the guilt by association will go away.
- You could always go over to the tanke side of Lemmy
- I really should have added a /s lol. I have experienced what ur talking about first hand but then again I don't fucking give 2 shits if I get downvotes.
  I banned from the news communities so I made my own !news_summary@lemmy.dbzer0.com with blackjack and AI summary hookers. And a moderation policy that's chill AF allowing real discussion.
👀
Free speech my ass.
That's not what free speech is. Freedom of speech prevents the government stopping you speaking, not private organizations.
- Ahh yes free speech invented by the American constitution. I forgot that its not a philosophical ideal how stupid of me to assume that.
  Stfu
- prevents the government
  That's the american legal version. If you think about the philosophical concept, it's waaaayyyy more broad than this.
the fediverse is tolerant
LOL no, it isn't.
descenting opinions.
I'm picturing descending opinions. Ones that start off alright, but just keep on getting worse the more you think about them...lol

"Instagram blocked searches related to a number of political hashtags, including #democrats, #democrat, #jan6th, #republicans and a number of other terms Tuesday."

It's not just democrat

- Here, I took this just now: https://i.imgur.com/GoBOPwG.jpeg
- Amazing. /s
  The ban list seems a little bit incosistent, but is really obvious on where the bias goes. Not that Instagram were good ever.
It’s not just democrat
It was. Searching republican yielded results, searching democrat yielded a sensitive content warning and no results. They "fixed" it later.
Adding republicans to the title would get less clicks though.
- Sadly, yes. It's important to know your audience.

Lmao. The US Democrats are barely centre, let alone left at all. You're on a whole different planet if you think they're "far left"

What if it's a bug? Maybe they didn't block it intentionally.

Even if it was, the timing is odd isn’t it ? I don’t recall hearing about „bugs“ like this before.