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FAQ: How not to get Zucked
Updated On: 31 March, 2024 08:03 AM IST | Mumbai | Aastha Atray Banan
Instagram is slowly limiting political content, in the process nuking your friendly political content creator. But these social media warriors use hacks to bring you the facts before you vote
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Scrolling through Andheri West Shit Posting’s Instagram feed is like strolling past a well-stocked shaadi ka buffet table. Chinese, Italian, salads, chaat, sushi… There’s something for everyone. If one post talks about how the Central government granting magisterial posts to local priests could be a politically-charged move, another is a clip of Jackie Chan saying “Cheese” instead of “Freeze” in a Rush Hour blooper. The third urges daily commuters on the Virar Fast to speak to their local MP about allotting more trains to counter overcrowding, but the next one is Winnie the Pooh floating away to happiness on the IPL theme.
This content khichdi is a well-thought out plan by Balram Vishwakarama, the force behind the handle which has 128K followers. It’s a strategy directed over the past year when he restarted his page, which he had shut down in 2020. “From 50,000 likes and 3,000 comments,” he says, “posts started getting only 200 likes. Sometimes, this trend would continue for three days, sometimes, a week, and sometimes, a whole month. In content creator world lingo, I got Zucked [a verb stemming from the Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s last name]—the algorithm killed the reach. It got so bad that I shut the page down.” So now, he “micro doses” the audience with political content. “I hide it between the multiple other posts on cricket or humour, so the algorithm doesn’t pick it up. Out of every five posts, you will find one on social or political issues.”
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