Instagram’s political restrictions & what to do about them

How political accounts are feeling the platform’s change and tactics for getting around it

Last week, Instagram began to implement its long-awaited restrictions on the promotion of political content. Essentially, the popular social media platform will no longer recommend political content to users from accounts they do not follow unless the users go into their settings and opt-in. This change began to take effect for most users sometime in the middle of last week, as part of a routine Instagram software update. Although the story’s been covered a lot in the tech and political press recently, we have some unique data showing the impact of the change, as well as some ideas on how campaigns can get around it. But first…

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By the numbers

FWIW, political advertisers spent just over $9.1 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:

In a stunning special election victory on Tuesday night, Democrat Marilyn Lands won a Trump-voting Alabama State House District by 25 points, flipping the seat from Red to Blue. Lands made her campaign focused on abortion rights, including telling her own abortion story in her ads, while her GOP opponent said ahead of Election Day, “I don’t think that this is the issue that wins or loses the race.”

A new political organization calling itself the American Parents Coalition launched last week and is up on Facebook and elsewhere with anti-TikTok video ads. The ads, which are targeting users in Ohio, Montana, and Pennsylvania, cite the app’s negative effects on children’s mental health, calling it “poison.” Another anti-TikTok ad campaign was similarly launched last week by a group called State Armor Action. You can view their ads here. It’s unclear who’s funding either of these groups, but APC’s founder has ties to the Trump administration and GOP politics.

Meanwhile, political campaigns spent $3.5 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:

Progressive organization Sixteen Thirty Fund spent over $90,000 on ads last week that tout how Democrats in the House have worked to lower drug prices and push them to continue that work. They also include direct-to-camera testimony from patients and medical staff about how this has helped them. The ads are mostly running in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan.

On Snapchat, political advertisers in the U.S. have spent $622,600 on ads year to date. Here are the top spenders:

Two weeks after starting to run Snapchat ads in 2024, the Biden campaign is seeing a big bang for its buck: With a $71,566 total spend on that platform, it has amassed over 15 million impressions—the highest amount of any political advertiser on Snapchat this year.

 …and lastly, political advertisers on X (formerly Twitter) have spent over $1.2 million on the platform in 2024. Here are the top spending accounts:

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Your 2024 digital dispatch 

FWIW, here’s how weekly digital ad spending (Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube) compares between the Trump and Biden campaigns year-to-date:

This past week, the Trump campaign spent its largest weekly amount in 2024 on Google + YouTube and Facebook + Instagram ads. They also spent an additional $113,182 on Twitter ads, bringing their total weekly expenditure to just under $1 million. As usual, however, Team Biden spent more—a whopping $1,820,109 on Google + YouTube and Facebook + Instagram ads alone.

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From around the internet:

• The Republican National Committee is now asking job applicants to affirm their belief in The Big Lie that the 2020 Election was stolen. At the same time, the new RNC Co-Chair has been hanging out with MAGA internet celebrity Scott Presler in the party’s headquarters. The last time Presler was in a Republican party office, things got spicy. 

• MAGA’s favorite spoiler candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced his running mate this week: a random 38-year-old lawyer named Nicole. He apparently considered a half dozen other folks to run on the ticket with him, including Aaron Rodgers and Tulsi Gabbard, but they declined, and Nicole Shanahan said yes. Following the announcement, Donald Trump cheered on their candidacy as “great for MAGA.”

• Former RNC chair and wannabe coup-plotter Ronna McDaniel was the political internet’s main character this week, as she was hired and then fired by NBC News. Dan Pfeiffer has an excellent take on how the entire debacle is a reflection of how the mainstream media is ill-equipped to handle the 2024 election.

• Howard Polskin at The Righting found that traffic to right-wing media websites continues to crater, with traffic to several prominent sites declining by 80% over a similar time period in 2020. 

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Instagram’s political content limits, and what to do about them

Last week, Instagram began to implement its long-awaited restrictions on the promotion of political content. Essentially, the popular social media platform will no longer recommend political content to users from accounts they do not follow unless the users go into their settings and opt-in. This change began to take effect for most users sometime in the middle of last week, as part of a routine Instagram software update. The story has been covered a ton in the political and tech press in recent weeks, see here, here, here, and here.