Platform by Platform: Audiences, Ranking, Rules and Benchmarks for Advocacy

The beginner version of this material, platform by platform with character limits and image sizes, is How the Platforms Differ on the Journalism site, and the video length limits are in Pacing and Length by Platform. This lesson is about the questions those lessons do not ask: who is on each platform in the proportions that matter for an Idaho decision, what each platform's own documents say its ranking rewards, what rules apply to a page that talks about laws, elections and public money, what the paid route looks like, and what a realistic engagement number is. The platform ranking mechanics are in lesson 01; the audience mapping that should drive your platform choice is in lesson 02. The entries below assume both.

How to read the audience numbers

All audience figures come from Pew Research Center's 2025 work: Americans' Social Media Use 2025 (5,022 adults, February 5 to June 18, 2025, plus or minus 1.9 points) for platform use, and the Social Media and News Fact Sheet (survey August 18 to 24, 2025) for news use. They are national. Pew does not publish Idaho shares, so the rural and age columns are your best proxy and the lesson says "national rural figure" wherever it uses one. Idaho's population is older and more rural than the US average, which pushes every platform except Facebook and YouTube below the national share here.

Platform	US adults who use it (2025)	Rural adults	Ages 65+	Ages 18-29	Regularly get news there	Rep / Dem (lean)
YouTube	84%	79%	64%	95%	35%	84 / 85
Facebook	71%	71%	57%	68%	38%	72 / 70
Instagram	50%	37%	19%	80%	20%	49 / 53
TikTok	37%	32%	12%	63%	20%	33 / 40
Reddit	26%	18%	6%	48%	9%	22 / 32
X	21%	17%	10%	33%	12%	24 / 19
LinkedIn	32% (2024)	n/a	n/a	n/a	not reported	n/a
Nextdoor	13% (2021)	n/a	n/a	n/a	6%	n/a
Threads	8%	4%	3%	15%	3%	6 / 10
Bluesky	4%	2%	2%	6%	2%	1 / 8
Substack Notes	not surveyed by Pew	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a

Pew, 2025. LinkedIn and Nextdoor were last asked in earlier years; Pew did not report their 2025 demographics. Not every difference is statistically significant.

How to read the engagement benchmarks

Two industry reports publish engagement benchmarks with a disclosed method, and both must be read with the method in front of you.

Socialinsider's 2026 benchmarks (published January 16, 2026, with quarterly 2026 updates) analyzed about 70 million posts from "a representative sample of international brands" on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X between January 2024 and December 2025. Engagement rate is interactions divided by followers (fans on Facebook): for Facebook, reactions plus comments plus shares; Instagram, likes plus comments; X, likes plus retweets; TikTok, likes, comments, shares and saves. Average engagement rate per post by followers: TikTok 2.50 percent (2024), 3.70 percent (2025), 2.50 percent (2026 quarterly); Instagram 0.50, 0.48, 0.45; Facebook 0.15, 0.15, 0.13; X 0.15, 0.12, 0.10. The same report gives averages per post in 2025 of 255 likes, 22 comments and 17 shares on Facebook; 335 likes, 20 comments and 45 shares on Instagram; 3,492 likes, 50 comments and 248 shares on TikTok; and 15 likes, 1 comment and 1 share on X. Posting frequency per month: TikTok 15, Instagram 20, Facebook 24 (down from 47), X 70 (up from 50). The sample is brands, not advocacy pages, and the accounts are large, which drags follower-based rates down; a small, local page will usually beat these rates and should not congratulate itself for doing so.

Rival IQ's 2025 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report (February 25, 2025) selects 150 companies at random from each of 14 industries out of a database of more than 200,000, requires an active presence on Facebook, Instagram and X, Facebook fan counts between 25,000 and 1,000,000 and at least 1,000 Instagram and X followers, counts likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares and reactions, divides by total followers, and reports the median company per industry. The blog page publishes its rate charts as images, but the full report PDF states the medians: across all 14 industries, 0.046 percent engagement per post by follower on Facebook, 0.36 percent on Instagram, 0.015 percent per tweet on X and 1.73 percent per video on TikTok; for the Nonprofits industry, 0.046 percent on Facebook, 0.561 percent on Instagram, 0.023 percent on X and 3.04 percent on TikTok, with nonprofits posting 5.51 times a week on Facebook, 4.18 on Instagram, 5.68 on X and 1.42 on TikTok. What the text states is that engagement rates fell year over year on every platform (Facebook down 36 percent, Instagram 16, TikTok 34, X 48) and that the Nonprofits industry ran above the all-industry median on every channel, placed second on TikTok behind higher education, got its best Facebook engagement from photos (which nonprofits posted three times as often as any other type), and got its best Instagram engagement from carousels. Those format findings feed lesson 05.

Neither report measures reach-based engagement, which is what Meta Business Suite, X analytics and TikTok Analytics show you by default. If a benchmark says 0.45 percent and your Instagram post shows 6 percent, you are dividing by the roughly one-tenth of followers who saw the post, not by followers. Pick one denominator for your own dashboard (lesson 08) and only compare against a benchmark that uses the same one.

Platform	Socialinsider 2025 average, by followers	Socialinsider 2026 quarterly	What the platform says it predicts (lesson 01)	Link handling, per the platform's documents
TikTok	3.70% per post	2.50%	Watch to the end, likes, shares, comments, follows; follower count not a direct factor	No documented link penalty; links live in bio and, for eligible accounts, in captions
Instagram	0.48%	0.45%	Feed: seconds spent, comment, like, share, profile tap; Reels: reshare, watch through; Explore: likes, saves, shares	No clickable links in captions; link in bio and Stories; no documented penalty
Facebook	0.15%	0.13% (Q3)	Comments and shares between people weighted up since 2018; engagement bait demoted since 2017	Fewer than 13% of 2021 Feed views were on link posts (WVCR); Pages were told referral traffic would fall; no explicit link penalty published
X	0.12%	0.10%	Reply 5.0, quote 5.0, share via copy link 20.0, follow author 4.0, like 0.66; report -234	Open link weighted +0.2 in 2026 code; no penalty parameter; 48-hour age filter on recommendations
YouTube	not in study	not in study	Watch time, survey satisfaction (4 and 5 stars), shares, likes	Links in descriptions and cards; no ranking statement on links
LinkedIn	not in study	not in study	Professional relevance; promotional, engagement bait and unoriginal posts "may not get shared beyond your connections"	Promotional posts without insight are not recommended beyond connections
Bluesky	not in study	not in study	Depends on which custom feed the viewer uses; no single ranking	Varies by feed; no platform-wide policy on links

Facebook Pages and Groups

Audience. 71 percent of US adults, flat across urban, suburban and rural, 80 percent of adults 30 to 49, 57 percent of adults 65 and older, 52 percent of all adults daily (57 percent of rural adults daily). 38 percent of adults regularly get news there, the most of any platform, skewing toward women and adults without a college degree. For any Idaho decision made by voters or by officials who answer to voters over 40, this is the platform.

Ranking and links. Feed ranks Page posts against friends' posts and, since the January 2018 change, favors posts that start conversation between people; Meta warned that Pages whose posts draw no comments or reactions would see the biggest drops. Engagement bait has been demoted since December 2017. The Widely Viewed Content Report found fewer than 13 percent of Feed content views on link posts in 2021. Civic content from followed Pages has, since Meta's January 7, 2025 announcement, been treated "more like any other content."

Groups. Meta's March 17, 2021 post Changes to Keep Facebook Groups Safe states that civic and political groups were removed from recommendations in the US and that the restriction was being expanded globally, and that groups that break rules are shown lower in recommendations with their content shown lower in members' feeds. A civic group therefore grows through invitations, search and shares from Pages, not through Facebook suggesting it. That is a disadvantage for discovery and an advantage for the complex-contagion work of lesson 02: a group is where members see each other act.

Civic and political rules. Organic political posting from a Page is allowed. Paid promotion of anything about social issues, elections or politics requires authorization and a verified "Paid for by" disclaimer; ads without one are disapproved and logged in the Ad Library. Lesson 06 covers the authorization steps and lesson 04 covers Idaho's own disclaimer and reporting rules for a boosted post.

Good for: reaching rural and older voters, local groups where the hearing-attendance behavior spreads, event pages, long captions with documents, live video of meetings, and the broadest paid reach with the most detailed ad library for your opponents to read. Bad for: link traffic, reaching adults under 30 (68 percent use it, far fewer rely on it), and any effort that cannot tolerate the civic-recommendation rules changing again.

Instagram

Audience. Half of US adults, 80 percent of 18 to 29 year olds and 19 percent of those 65 and older; 37 percent rural against 55 percent urban; 55 percent of women and 44 percent of men. 20 percent of adults regularly get news there, skewing young, female and Democratic.

Ranking and links. Mosseri's 2023 explanation describes separate systems: Feed predicts time spent, comments, likes, shares and profile taps; Explore weights likes, saves and shares with post information mattering more than relationship; Reels predicts reshares and watching through. Low-resolution and watermarked reels are made less visible by rule. Captions carry no clickable links; the link goes in the bio or a Story.

Civic rules. The February 9, 2024 policy stopped recommending political content (defined as content "potentially related to things like laws, elections, or social topics") from accounts a user does not follow on Explore, Reels, in-feed recommendations and suggested users, with an opt-in control; followed accounts were unaffected. The January 2025 announcement began phasing political recommendations back in using each viewer's explicit and implicit signals. The live policy is on Meta's Our Approach to Political Content page. Paid promotion follows the same authorization rule as Facebook.

Good for: reaching adults under 50 in Idaho's cities and college towns, visual evidence (maps, documents, before-and-after), carousels (the top format for nonprofits in Rival IQ's data), and Reels for a younger audience. Bad for: rural and older audiences, link traffic, and depending on Explore for civic discovery.

Threads

Audience. 8 percent of US adults, 15 percent of 18 to 29 year olds, 4 percent of rural adults; 3 percent regularly get news there; 10 percent of Democrats and 6 percent of Republicans use it. Rules. Threads shares Instagram's political recommendation policy, including the 2024 limit and 2025 reversal. Good for: a text channel for people who left X, reporters and policy staff in the Boise area, and reposting Instagram content with a sentence of context. Bad for: any audience outside that; the rural figure is 4 percent. Run it only as a low-cost mirror.

X

Audience. 21 percent of US adults, 33 percent of 18 to 29 year olds, 17 percent rural; men more than women; 24 percent of Republicans and 19 percent of Democrats (reversed from two years earlier, when Democrats led 26 to 20). 12 percent regularly get news there, a high ratio to use, and Pew's 2024 influencer study found 85 percent of news influencers present on X. For reaching reporters, legislators, legislative staff and the people who argue about state policy, X remains the room, and it is a small room.

Ranking and links. Lesson 01 has the 2023 and 2026 weights. Replies (5.0, plus 15.0 between mutual followers), quotes (5.0), shares by copying the link (20.0) and new follows (4.0) dominate; likes are 0.66; reports -234. Posts older than 48 hours are filtered from For You. Out-of-network posts carry a discount and authors with few impressions a boost. Opening a link is weighted +0.2, so the code contains no link penalty; the practical effect of a link is whatever it does to predicted replies and shares.

Civic rules and ads. X's political content ads policy permits both political content ads and political campaigning ads in the United States. Campaigning ads (for or against a candidate, party, election, legislation, referendum or ballot measure, or soliciting support for one, including ads from PACs) require certification first, may use only location, age, gender, interest and keyword, custom audience and follower look-alike targeting, may be bought for a country only by citizens or entities based there, and are listed in a public Political Ads Library. The policy makes compliance with election law the advertiser's responsibility and sets no disclaimer wording, so Idaho's own "paid for by" rules govern what you put in the ad.

Good for: press, legislators, real-time hearing threads, documents, quote-replies to officials, and the only verifiable view of what ranking rewards. Bad for: reaching ordinary Idaho voters (17 percent rural use, 10 percent of seniors), content that needs more than two days of life, and any page that cannot tolerate hostile replies, which the weights reward.

Bluesky

Audience. 4 percent of US adults, 2 percent rural, 8 percent of Democrats against 1 percent of Republicans, 2 percent regularly get news there. Bluesky reported "over 43 million global users" in its March 19, 2026 funding announcement, up from 13 million in October 2024. It is the most politically lopsided platform in Pew's table.

Ranking. There is no single ranking. Bluesky's custom feeds (July 2023) let any developer build a feed and any user pin, reorder or replace feeds, including the default Discover feed, which Bluesky describes as mixing followed accounts, nearby accounts and what is trending. A post's reach depends on which feeds its readers use, and advocacy pages can appear in topic feeds (an Idaho feed, a public-lands feed) built by third parties. Bluesky has no advertising product; its community guidelines (updated September 19, 2025) prohibit spam, artificially inflated reach, impersonation of official groups, undisclosed commercial or sponsored content, and election interference including false voting information and impersonation of campaigns or election officials. Verification is handled through trusted verifiers (April 2025) and by setting a domain you control as your handle.

Good for: reaching journalists and the policy and academic crowd that migrated from X, especially on the issues where that audience is concentrated, and for owning your handle as your domain. Bad for: any general Idaho audience; paid reach (there is none); analytics (lesson 08 covers the lack of native analytics). Run it only if your theory of change names that audience.

TikTok

Audience. 37 percent of US adults, up from 21 percent in 2021; 63 percent of 18 to 29 year olds and 12 percent of those 65 and older; 32 percent rural; 47 percent of young adults daily; 20 percent of adults regularly get news there, skewing young, female, non-college and Democratic (40 percent of Democrats use it against 33 percent of Republicans).

Ranking. TikTok's 2020 description remains the only public one: interactions, video information and (at low weight) device settings; finishing a longer video is a strong signal; "neither follower count nor whether the account has had previous high-performing videos are direct factors"; the feed avoids two videos in a row from one creator and mixes in content outside stated interests. Reporting in December 2025 described TikTok's US operations moving into a joint venture, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, owned 50 percent by Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, 30.1 percent by ByteDance's existing investors and 19.9 percent by ByteDance, with the deal set to close January 22, 2026 and the US entity to retrain the recommendation algorithm on US user data; those details come from a CEO letter as reported by CNBC and 9to5Google, and this lesson has not verified the closing or what the retraining changed. If your effort depends on TikTok, read TikTok's own notices before planning.

Civic rules and ads. TikTok has prohibited paid political ads since October 3, 2019: "we will not allow paid ads that promote or oppose a candidate, current leader, political party or group, or issue." On September 21, 2022 it turned off advertising, gifting, tipping, e-commerce and Creator Fund eligibility for government, politician and political party accounts, banned solicitation for campaign fundraising (videos asking for donations and links to donation pages), and trialed mandatory verification for US political accounts. Advocacy organizations that are not parties or candidates are not named in that policy, but an advocacy account cannot buy political or issue ads under the 2019 rule, so every view is organic.

Good for: reaching adults under 35, explaining one thing in 60 seconds, and reaching people who follow nobody political (the feed does not need them to). Bad for: rural and older Idaho voters, anything paid, fundraising, link traffic, and planning around a ranking system whose ownership and training data changed in 2026.

YouTube: long and Shorts

Audience. 84 percent of US adults, the most of any platform; 95 percent of 18 to 29 year olds and 64 percent of those 65 and older; 79 percent rural; 48 percent daily. 35 percent of adults regularly get news there, with both parties about equal, and men, Black, Hispanic and Asian adults overrepresented. It is the second platform, after Facebook, that reaches Idaho's rural and older voters in numbers.

Ranking. The 2021 explanation: watch time since 2012, satisfaction surveys with "valued watchtime" counting only four and five star ratings, shares and likes as satisfaction, dislikes as dissatisfaction, authoritative sources promoted for news and borderline content demoted. Shorts run up to 3 minutes per YouTube Help. Long video is where YouTube's satisfaction model favors content people are glad they watched, which suits a 12-minute walkthrough of a budget or a recorded forum better than any other platform.

Civic rules and ads. YouTube's elections misinformation policy removes content that misleads about how, when, where or who can vote, false claims about candidates' legal eligibility, and incitement to interfere with democratic processes, with an exception for educational, documentary and public-interest context such as campaign speeches and debates. Paid promotion runs through Google Ads under the political content policy: US election ads (federal and state candidates and officeholders, parties, qualified state ballot measures) require US Election Ads verification, carry an automatically generated "paid for by" disclosure, and may be targeted only by location (no radius), age, gender and contextual signals. The policy then lists state restrictions, and Idaho's is blunt: "Ads related to ballot measures and candidates for local elections" are listed as not allowed. A county levy, a city bond, a school board race or a city council race cannot be advertised on YouTube or any Google property in Idaho. State and legislative candidates can still advertise after US Election Ads verification. Whether a qualified statewide ballot measure can is unclear from Google's text, so a statewide measure committee should confirm with Google in writing. A legislative or statewide candidate can, by a verified advertiser. Google Ad Grants accounts (the free nonprofit grants) cannot run election ads at all.

Good for: the broadest reach after Facebook, long explainers, hearing recordings, embedding in your own site and email, search traffic that lasts years, and reaching rural men who are not on Facebook. Bad for: paid promotion of local measures and candidates in Idaho (prohibited), fast reaction, and anything that cannot be made worth watching for several minutes.

LinkedIn

Audience. 32 percent of US adults in Pew's 2024 figure; Pew did not report 2025 demographics or news use. Ranking. LinkedIn's Content Recommendations: What to Avoid says promotional posts without insight, engagement bait ("Like if you agree!" polls, tagging for attention, irrelevant hashtags), unoriginal reposts and image macros without professional context "may not get shared beyond your connections and followers," because recommended content must meet "a higher standard for quality and professionalism." Civic rules. US members can switch off political content in their feed and notifications; the setting covers "political parties and candidates, election outcomes, and ballot initiatives" and military conflict, and explicitly "does not cover content on social issues that may be discussed in a political context." LinkedIn's ads policy prohibits political ads outright, including ads for or against "a particular candidate, party, ballot proposition, law, regulation," fundraising for candidates, parties, PACs or ballot propositions, and "ads exploiting a sensitive political issue even if the advertiser has no explicit political agenda."

Good for: reaching business owners, agency staff, hospital and utility executives and the professional class that testifies on economic matters, with issue framing (water policy, workforce, infrastructure) rather than electoral framing. Bad for: elections, ballot measures and paid reach of any political kind.

Nextdoor

Audience. 13 percent of US adults in Pew's last measurement (2021); 6 percent regularly get news there in 2025. The audience is by definition local and homeowner-heavy, which is why it matters for a rezone or a road bond far beyond its national share.

Rules. Nextdoor's own help pages block automated reading, so the verified source here is the Terms of Service report Nextdoor filed with the New York Attorney General on April 1, 2026 under New York General Business Law section 42-1102, which reproduces its content rules. The guidelines say Nextdoor "keeps the main newsfeed focused on local and personal topics," that "broader conversations" such as "national politics or global issues" belong in Groups, that local candidates "may introduce themselves in the main feed, but may not campaign or share ongoing campaign updates there," and that requesting donations for political candidates is not permitted. Nextdoor removes false voting information and doctored content about candidates. The ads policy (effective April 1, 2025) says "no political advertisements are permitted via self-serve"; in the US, political and social-issue ads are available only to managed-service clients, must "promote only local issue-based topics," and "cannot advocate for or against a particular candidate, party, legislation, referendum, or ballot proposition." 501(c)(6) organizations may not advertise social issues there at all.

Good for: a neighborhood-level issue (a rezone, a road, a park, a water rate) discussed as a local matter, and for finding the residents who will testify. Bad for: candidates, ballot measures as such, anything statewide, and paid reach without a sales contract.

Reddit

Audience. 26 percent of US adults, 48 percent of 18 to 29 year olds and 6 percent of those 65 and older; 18 percent rural; about four in ten college graduates against 15 percent of those with a high school education or less; 32 percent of Democrats and 22 percent of Republicans; 9 percent regularly get news there. Idaho has active state and city subreddits whose moderators set their own rules.

Rules. Reddit's spam guidance says that if most of your contributions are links to something you run or benefit from, "be thoughtful about the frequency of posting," suggests the ad product instead, bars using multiple accounts to inflate a community, and leaves each community's moderators to decide what counts as spam. Reddit's political ads policy, as reported by TechCrunch on April 13, 2020, allowed only US federal-level political ads, required comments to stay open for 24 hours, reviewed each ad manually and published every campaign in r/RedditPoliticalAds; Reddit's current policy page could not be read for this lesson, so confirm the state and local rule before planning any paid Reddit work.

Good for: answering questions from engaged younger residents in a city subreddit, in your own name, with documents; long-form explanation in comments that gets found by search. Bad for: broadcasting, anything that looks like a campaign posting into a community, rural and older audiences, and paid reach for local issues.

Substack Notes

What it is. Substack announced Notes on April 5, 2023 as a short-form feed where writers and readers post and "restack" posts, quotes and links. Substack says "the Substack network runs on paid subscriptions, not ads," so there is no paid reach and no political ad policy to read. Pew does not survey it. Good for: a page whose owned audience is an email newsletter (lesson 07): Notes put your short posts in front of other newsletter readers and writers who already subscribe to things, and a restack by a larger newsletter is a Goel-style broadcast. Bad for: any audience that does not already read newsletters, and it has no local or demographic targeting at all.

Platform	Organic civic posting	Paid political or issue ads	Requirement for paid	Source
Facebook, Instagram, Threads	Allowed; recommendation of political content from unfollowed accounts limited Feb. 2024, phased back from Jan. 2025	Allowed	Authorization and verified "Paid for by" disclaimer; Idaho disclaimer and reporting rules also apply	Meta ad standards; Meta Newsroom 2024 and 2025
X	Allowed	Allowed in the US	Certification for political campaigning ads; limited targeting; Political Ads Library; buyer must be US-based	X Help Center, political content
YouTube (Google Ads)	Allowed, subject to elections misinformation policy	Allowed for federal and state candidates and qualified state ballot measures; Idaho local candidate and local ballot measure ads not allowed	US Election Ads verification; auto "paid for by"; no radius targeting; no Ad Grants	Google Ads political content policy
TikTok	Allowed; politician and party accounts lose ads, monetization and fundraising	Prohibited since 2019	n/a	TikTok Newsroom 2019 and 2022
LinkedIn	Allowed; US users can switch political content off; promotional and bait posts not recommended beyond connections	Prohibited	n/a	LinkedIn ads policy and Help
Nextdoor	Politics in Groups; candidates may introduce themselves in the main feed but not campaign; no candidate donation requests	Not via self-serve; local issue ads only through managed service; no candidate, party, legislation or ballot advocacy	Sales contract	Nextdoor NY ToS report (2026); Nextdoor ads policy (2025)
Reddit	Allowed within each community's rules; self-promotion frequency flagged as spam	Federal-level only, per 2020 policy as reported; confirm current rule	Manual review; comments open 24 hours; r/RedditPoliticalAds listing	Reddit Help; TechCrunch 2020
Bluesky	Allowed; election interference and undisclosed sponsored content prohibited	No ad product	n/a	Bluesky Community Guidelines (Sept. 2025)
Substack Notes	Allowed	No ad product	n/a	Substack, Introducing Notes

The decision table for an Idaho advocacy effort

The table sorts platforms for three common shapes of Idaho advocacy. "Run" means a primary channel with a posting cadence and a budget line; "maintain" means a mirror or a presence kept current for the audience that is there; "skip" means do not open it unless your theory of change names an audience that lives there and nowhere else. The platform mix for a network of several pages is designed in lesson 04.

Platform	A. County or city decision (rezone, levy, bond, local ordinance), voters mostly rural and over 40	B. Statewide legislative or agency decision, audience is legislators, press and engaged citizens	C. Youth-heavy issue in a college town or Boise metro	Why
Facebook Page	Run	Run	Maintain	71 percent rural, 57 percent of seniors, 38 percent news; paid allowed with authorization
Facebook Group	Run (the attendance engine)	Maintain	Maintain	Where members see each other act; not recommended by Meta, so grow it from the Page
YouTube long	Run	Run	Run	84 percent of adults, 79 percent rural, both parties equal; organic only for local measures in Idaho
YouTube Shorts	Maintain	Maintain	Run	Same reach as YouTube; 3-minute limit; cut from your long video
Instagram	Maintain	Maintain	Run	37 percent rural, 19 percent seniors, 80 percent of 18 to 29
Threads	Skip	Maintain	Maintain	4 percent rural; a mirror for the press and policy crowd
X	Skip or maintain	Run	Maintain	17 percent rural, 10 percent seniors; but 85 percent of news influencers and most legislators and reporters are there
Bluesky	Skip	Maintain	Maintain	4 percent of adults, 8 percent of Democrats, 1 percent of Republicans; journalists; no ads
TikTok	Skip	Skip	Run	63 percent of 18 to 29, 12 percent of seniors; no political ads; 2026 ownership and retraining changes
LinkedIn	Skip	Maintain (issue framing only)	Skip	Professional audience; no political ads; users can switch political content off
Nextdoor	Run (local issue in Groups; comply with main-feed rule)	Skip	Skip	Local homeowners; no self-serve political ads; politics belongs in Groups
Reddit	Skip	Maintain (answer questions in the state subreddit)	Run (city subreddit)	48 percent of 18 to 29; 18 percent rural; moderators rule
Substack Notes	Maintain if you have a newsletter	Run if you have a newsletter	Maintain	Newsletter readers only; no ads; restacks by larger newsletters

Questions and answers

We are a small county group. Can we really skip TikTok and X?

For a county decision made by rural voters over 40, yes, and the table says so. TikTok reaches 32 percent of rural adults and 12 percent of seniors with no paid option; X reaches 17 and 10 percent. A Facebook Page, a Facebook Group for the people who will show up, a YouTube channel for the long explanation, and Nextdoor for the affected neighborhoods cover the audiences your theory of change names. If a reporter you need lives on X, maintain an account that posts your documents and otherwise stay quiet there.

Can we run a YouTube ad for our school levy?

No. Google's political content policy lists Idaho among the states with restrictions and marks "ads related to ballot measures and candidates for local elections" as not allowed there. That covers levies, bonds and local candidates on YouTube and every other Google property. You can post the video organically, embed it on your site and in email, and promote it on Facebook and Instagram with Meta authorization and a disclaimer, subject to Idaho's own rules in the campaign finance course.

Why does the lesson cite a New York Attorney General filing for Nextdoor's rules?

Because Nextdoor's help center blocks automated reading and the New York filing, which Nextdoor made under state law on April 1, 2026, reproduces the rules verbatim. It is a primary document from the company. The same filings exist for the other large platforms and are worth knowing about when a help page is unreadable or has changed without notice.

Does Instagram still suppress political content?

Not in the February 2024 form. That policy limited recommendations of political content from accounts a user did not follow, with an opt-in. In January 2025 Meta announced it would phase political content back into recommendations based on each user's signals. Followed accounts were never affected. The current rules are on Meta's Transparency Center page, and the honest answer for any given month is to read it that month.

Is Bluesky worth an account for an Idaho group?

Only if your theory of change names the audience that is there: journalists, academics, policy staff and a largely Democratic-leaning public (8 percent of Democrats, 1 percent of Republicans use it). For a statewide policy effort that needs press coverage, a maintained account that posts documents costs little. For a county levy, it reaches 2 percent of rural adults and cannot be bought. The custom feed model does give an Idaho-specific feed real value for the few who use it.

What is a good engagement rate for an advocacy page?

There is no verified advocacy-specific benchmark with a disclosed method. The closest is Rival IQ's Nonprofits industry, which ran above its all-industry medians on every channel: in the 2025 report PDF the nonprofit medians per post by follower were 0.046 percent on Facebook, 0.561 percent on Instagram, 0.023 percent on X and 3.04 percent on TikTok, from 150 nonprofits with 25,000 to a million Facebook fans. Socialinsider's brand averages by followers are 0.13 to 0.15 percent on Facebook, 0.45 to 0.48 on Instagram, 2.5 to 3.7 on TikTok and 0.10 to 0.12 on X. A local page should expect to beat those on a follower basis. The useful number is your own median, on one denominator, tracked by quarter, which lesson 08 sets up.

We have a politician on our coalition's board. Does TikTok's politician policy hit our account?

The 2022 policy applies to accounts belonging to governments, politicians and political parties, and TikTok did not name advocacy organizations. Your coalition account is not a politician's account. Keep the politician's own account separate, expect it to have ads, gifting and fundraising switched off, and remember that your account still cannot run political or issue ads under the 2019 rule.

Should we post links in comments on Facebook?

Test it rather than assume it. Meta has published no link penalty; it has published that link posts were a small share of Feed views and that Pages would lose referral traffic as conversation was weighted up. A link in the comments trades a possible small ranking effect for a certain loss of clicks from people who never open comments. Run the comparison on your own page with the method in lesson 08, and keep whichever version produces more of the action your theory of change needs.

Hard questions

Isn't choosing platforms by Pew demographics a way of avoiding people who disagree with you?

Choosing where to be heard is the first job of any speaker, and the Pew tables show that the audiences on the big platforms are politically mixed: Facebook is 72 percent Republican and 70 percent Democrat, YouTube 84 and 85. A rural Facebook page reaches opponents and supporters alike. The platforms where you could hide among the like-minded are the small ones (Bluesky at 8 to 1, Truth Social at 6 to 1), and the decision table marks both as skip or maintain for most Idaho efforts. If the worry is about what you say to whom once you are there, that is the ethics question in lesson 09.

The ad bans on TikTok, LinkedIn and Nextdoor and Google's Idaho rule mean only well-funded groups with Meta budgets get paid reach. Isn't that unfair?

It narrows paid reach to Meta and X for most Idaho local work, and Meta's authorization and disclaimer rules at least make that spending visible in the Ad Library. The counterweight is that organic reach on TikTok and YouTube does not depend on money, that YouTube's satisfaction ranking rewards a well-made explainer whoever posts it, and that Nextdoor and Facebook Groups reward the local presence a small group has and a funded outside campaign does not. The campaign finance course covers how to read what the funded side spends; lesson 06 covers what reach per dollar looks like where paying is allowed.

Benchmarks from brand accounts are useless for advocacy. Why include them?

Because they are the only benchmarks with a disclosed method, and because the mistake they prevent (comparing a reach-based number with a follower-based one, or a mean with a median) is the most common error in reports to boards. The lesson says plainly that a local page should beat them and that the only meaningful comparison is your own page over time. Including them with their method is more useful than leaving readers to find them without it.

These rules change constantly. Why learn them at all?

Because the ones that bind you most have been stable: TikTok's political ad ban dates from 2019, LinkedIn's from well before 2025, Google's state restrictions have been in the policy for years, and Meta's authorization requirement since 2018. What changes is recommendation treatment of civic content, and the lesson teaches you to build a follower and email base that survives those changes rather than to memorize the current setting. The quarterly check in the steps box is the maintenance cost.

Why trust Pew over the platforms' own user numbers?

Platform numbers count accounts and are chosen by the platform (Bluesky's 43 million is global sign-ups; Meta reports a combined daily figure across its apps). Pew surveys a probability sample of US adults with a published method, margin of error and questionnaire, and asks the same question about every platform, which is what lets you compare them. Use platform figures for scale and Pew for who, and say which you are using.

Doesn't recommending Facebook and YouTube to everyone just hand the same two companies more power?

The recommendation follows the audience, and the audience for an Idaho county decision is on those two platforms by Pew's measurement. The lesson's answer to concentration risk is structural rather than platform choice: lesson 07 builds the list you own, lesson 04 spreads presence across a network, and the steps above make every recommendation-dependent channel answer to an owned one. A group that reaches rural voters only on Bluesky to make a point about platform power has made the point to nobody.