Edit: being emotionally unguarded online isnt a bad thing, just… not without trusting the website in the same way you would with a trust fall. This was aimed more at Tik-tok like sites.

IG, if I’m not mistaken its kind of like Tik-tok in that its a shotgun blast of random, emotionally charged ideas. Because the consumer is actively positioned to engage with the content in an unshielded emotional state (the player actively discourages/disallows pausing that would give you time to emotionally or mentally digest what you are watching, its also so simple you don’t need to). With this setup, the user is uncritically (almost like hypnosis) influenced by what users make and then what Facebook spins it to mean. No matter how manipulative it may be.

This feels like a patch over a broken system to protect them from the parasitic ideas the users would be vulnerable to, as well as genuine activism, trans people, and other false-positives the “political” filter picks up.

Facebook would just apply a secret global filter for ideas they don’t want you to see, only placing the manipulation into the “political” filter when they need a scapegoat and the ability to look progressive.