Adam Mosseri speaks on stage at the WIRED25 Summit 2019 – Day 1 at the Commonwealth Club on November 8, 2019 in San Francisco, California.
Matt Winkelmeyer | Getty Images
GoalThe new Threads app is less than two days old, but one of the company’s top executives believes that prioritizing news and political discourse on the platform is “absolutely not worth” the apparent downsides to the business and the “platform.”
Adam Mosseri, who oversees both Instagram and Instagram’s text-based Threads, offered the comment in a unusually candid post Friday on the new social network.
“Politics and hard news will inevitably appear on Threads, to some extent they have on Instagram, but we will do nothing to encourage those verticals,” he wrote in response to a reporter’s question about Threads. replacing Twitter with news industry professionals.
“Politics and hard news are important,” Mosseri continued. “But my view is, from a platform’s perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might generate isn’t worth the scrutiny, negativity (let’s be honest), or the integrity risks that come with it.”
Meta representatives did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on whether Meta would demote news or political content on Threads, as the company has periodically done. others platforms
Mosseri’s comment came as Meta fights to prevent governments from forcing the company to pay newsrooms for content that Meta leverages for advertising and engagement.
For example, in Canada. The new legislation would require Meta to pay Canadian newsrooms, costing both Google and Meta an estimated C$329 million against billions in advertising revenue.
In response, Meta blocked Canadian outlets from appearing in 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 soon after.
Goal employee the same technique in Australia when a similar law was passed in 2022.
Despite the breakdown of Twitter under Elon Musk’s ownership, which Mosseri has granted was the impetus behind the launch of Threads: Government agencies, politicians and journalists rely on the platform to disseminate breaking news and emergency notifications.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.
