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It\u2019s been a year since Meta pushed out Threads in an attempt to take on the platform now known as X. At the time, Mark Zuckerberg said that he hoped it would turn into \u201ca public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meta\u2019s timing was good. Threads launched at a particularly chaotic moment for Twitter, when many people were seeking out alternatives. Threads saw 30 million sign-ups in its first day and the app has since grown to <\/a> monthly users, according to Zuckerberg. (X has <\/a> monthly users, according to Elon Musk.)<\/p>\n But the earliest iteration of Threads still felt a little bit broken. There was no web version, and a lot of <\/a>. The company promised interoperability with ActivityPub, the open-source standard that powers Mastodon and other apps in the fediverse, but integration remains <\/a>.<\/p>\n One year later, it\u2019s still not really clear what Threads is actually for. Its leader <\/a> that “the goal isn\u2019t to replace Twitter\u201d but to create a \u201cpublic square\u201d for Instagram users and a \u201cless angry place for conversations.\u201dBut the service itself still has a number of issues that prevent it from realizing that vision. If Meta really wants to make that happen, here\u2019s what it should change.<\/p>\n If you follow me on Threads, then you probably already know this is my top complaint. But Meta desperately needs to fix the algorithm that powers Threads\u2019 default \u201cFor You\u201d feed. The algorithmic feed, which is the default view in both the app and website, is painfully slow. It often surfaces days-old posts, even during major, newsworthy moments when many people are posting about the same topic.<\/p>\n It\u2019s so bad it\u2019s become a running meme to post something along the lines of \u201cI can\u2019t wait to read about this on my \u2018For You\u2019 feed tomorrow,\u201d every time there\u2019s a major news event or trending story.<\/p>\n The algorithmic feed is also downright bizarre. For a platform that was built off of Instagram, an app that has extremely fine-tuned recommendations and more than a decade of data about the topics I\u2019m interested in, Threads appears to use none of it. Instead, it has a strange preference for intense personal stories from accounts I\u2019m entirely unconnected to.<\/p>\n In the last year, I\u2019ve seen countless multi-part Threads posts from complete strangers detailing childhood abuse, eating disorders, chronic illnesses, domestic violence, pet loss and other unimaginable horrors. These are not posts I\u2019m seeking out by any means, yet Meta\u2019s algorithm shoves them to the top of my feed.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve aggressively used Threads’ swipe <\/a> to try to rid my feed of excessive trauma dumping, and it\u2019s helped to some extent. But it hasn\u2019t improved the number of strange posts I see from completely random<\/em> individuals. At this moment the top two posts in my feed are from an event planner offering to share wedding tips and a woman describing a phone call from her health insurance company. (Both posts are 12 hours old.) These types of posts have led to blogger Max Read dubbing Threads the \u201c<\/a>\u201d because they make it feel as if everyone is \u201csuffering some kind of minor brain damage.\u201d<\/p>\n Look, I get why Meta has been cautious when it comes to content moderation on Threads. The company doesn\u2019t exactly have a great track record on issues like extremism, health misinformation or genocide-inciting hate speech. It\u2019s not surprising they would want to avoid similar headlines about Threads.<\/p>\n But if Meta wants Threads to be a \u201cpublic square,\u201d it can\u2019t <\/a> searches for topics like COVID-19 and vaccines just because they are \u201cpotentially sensitive.\u201d (Instagram head Adam Mosseri claimed this measure was \u201ctemporary\u201d last October.) If Meta wants Threads to be a \u201cpublic square,\u201d it shouldn\u2019t <\/a> political content from users\u2019 recommendations; and Threads\u2019 leaders shouldn\u2019t assume that users <\/a> to see news.<\/p>\n A year in, it\u2019s painfully clear that a platform like Threads is hamstrung without a proper direct messaging feature. For some reason, Threads\u2019 leaders, especially Mosseri, have been adamantly opposed to creating a separate inbox for the app.<\/p>\n Instead, users hoping to privately connect with someone on Threads are forced to switch over to Instagram and hope the person they are trying to reach accepts new message requests. There is an in-app way <\/a> a Threads post to an Instagram friend but this depends on you already being connected on Instagram.<\/p>\n Exactly why Threads can\u2019t have its own messaging feature isn\u2019t exactly clear. Mosseri has suggested that it doesn\u2019t make sense to build a new inbox for the app, but that ignores the fact that many people use Instagram and Threads very differently. Which brings me to\u2026<\/p>\n Meta <\/a> that the reason why it was able to get Threads out the door so quickly was largely thanks to Instagram. Threads was created using a lot of Instagram\u2019s code and infrastructure, which also helped the company get tens of millions of people to sign up for the app on <\/a><\/p>\n But continuing to require an Instagram account to use Threads makes little sense a year on. For one, it shuts out a not-insignificant number of people who may be interested in Threads but don\u2019t want to be on Instagram,<\/p>\n There\u2019s also the fact that the apps, though they share some design elements, are completely different kinds of services. And many people, myself included, use Instagram and Threads very differently.<\/p>\n A \u201cpublic square\u201d platform like Threads works best for public-facing accounts where conversations can have maximum visibility. But most people I know use their Instagram accounts for personal updates, like family photos. And while you can have different visibility settings for each app, you shouldn\u2019t be forced to link the two accounts. This also means that if you want to use Threads anonymously, you would need to create an entirely new Instagram account to serve as a login for the corresponding Threads account.<\/p>\n It seems that Meta is at least considering this. Mosseri said in <\/a> with Platformer<\/em> that the company is \u201cworking on things like Threads-only accounts\u201d and wants the app to become \u201cmore independent.\u201d<\/p>\n These aren\u2019t the only factors that will determine whether Threads will be, as Zuckerberg has speculated, Meta\u2019s next 1 billion-user app. Meta will, eventually, need to make money from the service, which is currently advertising-free. But before Meta\u2019s multibillion-dollar ad machine can be pointed at Threads, the company will need to better explain who its newest app is actually for.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nFix the \u2018For You\u2019 algorithm<\/h2>\n
Stop avoiding news, politics and anything \u201cpotentially sensitive\u201d<\/h2>\n
DMs, DMs, DMs<\/h2>\n
Decouple Threads from Instagram<\/h2>\n