In February 2024, Meta began limiting political content on Instagram. My colleagues and I quickly organized an open letter urging Meta to reverse this decision, which disproportionately impacts female, Black, LGBTQ, and disabled creators. With support from hundreds of content creators, we gathered thousands of signatures, and our action was covered by Taylor Lorenz in the Washington Post.

In the weeks that followed, we partnered with several prominent Instagram accounts posting political content and tracked their audience sizes, which dropped an average of 65% over 10 weeks.

As Geoffrey Fowler reported in the Washington Post, 1 in 5 Americans get their news from Instagram, making Meta’s actions harmful to the information ecosystem. Instead of addressing disinformation or hate speech, Meta weakened the reach of factual news and political content that is essential for civic engagement and understanding current events.

I designed content to showcase our research and media coverage across Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Leveraging my existing relationships with content creators from our February open letter, I reached out to them to share our findings and related press.

After the February announcement, I created a guide to help users disable the political content filter. This involved researching the steps, writing copy and captions, and managing the drafting and approval process. I also collaborated with an in-house designer to ensure the final product aligned with brand guidelines.