Instagram blocks your posts to all but 7% of your followers.
This is not true. Instagram confirmed earlier this year that no changes had been made to feed rankings recently or since the claim first appeared two years ago.
A number of posts on Instagram claim that the social media company has changed its algorithm so that no more than 7% of an account's followers can see posts it makes. This isn’t correct.
This is not the first time this claim has been shared, and the company addressed it in early 2019, confirming that it had not made any changes to its feed ranking and never hides posts from accounts that users follow. Since then, the claim has been debunked by organisations including BuzzFeed and PolitiFact.
Writing on Twitter in January 2019, a spokesperson for Instagram said: “What shows up first in your feed is determined by what posts and accounts you engage with the most, as well as other contributing factors such as the timeliness of posts, how often you use Instagram, how many people you follow, etc.
They added: “We have not made any recent changes to feed ranking, and we never hide posts from people you're following – if you keep scrolling, you will see them all. Again, your feed is personalized to you and evolves over time based on how you use Instagram.”
Instagram confirmed to PolitiFact this was still the case in February 2021.
We have asked Instagram whether this is still the case in September and will update this article if they respond. We’ve seen nothing to suggest their policy has changed.
Posts containing misinformation may have their distribution reduced by Instagram, for example by removing them from the Explore and hashtag pages. To determine whether a post includes misinformation, it works with third party fact checkers like Full Fact. However, this is a different issue to the claims made limiting post exposure to 7% of followers.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because it’s not true as confirmed by the company on several occasions since the claim was first made two years ago.
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