Independent journalist and podcaster Tucker Carlson, apparently, is the Devil! And if you like him, or simply watch his content, you’re an extremist! At least that’s what Instagram, and parent company Meta, want you to think.
According to Blaze Media’s social media content coordinator Ashton DeGroot, Instagram is now using a prompt to question users if they want to follow Carlson’s account — that is, if you can find it in the first place.
DeGroot’s Instagram query resulted in the following:
A perfunctory search for Carlson failed to turn up his verified account. Instead, impersonators and fan accounts flooded the results. After multiple tries, it appeared clear that Carlson's verified account would only appear if his exact handle, @TuckerCarlson, was entered into the search bar.
Upon finding Carlson's account, DeGroot found that Instagram put up one last barrier to engagement, imploring prospective followers to reconsider.
The pop-up reads, "Are you sure you want to follow tuckercarlson?"
"This account has repeatedly posted false information that was reviewed by independent fact-checkers or it went against our Community Guidelines," added the pop-up.
It would be interesting to understand why outlets like CNN or MSNBC wouldn’t have the same prompts come up when attempting to follow their accounts considering all the “fake news” they’ve reported, including topics such as Nicholas Sandmann, Jussie Smollett and the Russia collusion hoax, just to name a few.
On that note, Blaze News observed that they “did not encounter similar messages when test-following the accounts of various liberal personalities and publications.”
Moves like this are in line with Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s pattern of bias when you take into consideration his “election spending was ‘carefully orchestrated’ to influence 2020 vote, according to a 2021 New York Post article.
The overarching point here is that it doesn’t matter how you feel about Carlson. If you, as a social media platform, are going to allow someone to have an account on said platform, then leave it up to the users as to whether they want to follow someone or not. Making them feel guilty for attempting to do so says more about the platform than the user.
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