Meta aims to resolve Threads’ engagement bait issue

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

If you are a regular user of Meta threads, then you must have come across at least some level of engagement bait in the “for you” feed. However, it took the social media company long to recognize the problem, and ever since there has been a surge in such posts, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said the company is ‘‘trying to deal with the problem.”.

“At Threads, we have noticed a growing trend of engagement bait, and we are trying to deal with the problem,” Mosseri posted on the app. He did not mention details about what the company is doing about it but said more is to follow on this matter.

Mosseri’s comments are the first time that Meta’s top executive has addressed that specific bug, which has been catching more attention from Threads users. There is always the assumption that the feed that users always see is the algorithmic “for you” feed, and due to that, engagement bait-style posts that necessarily receive many replies regularly trend on the app, even if it is a kind of content most users do not wish to come across.

However, the issue could be quite difficult to solve because what people commonly categorize as ‘engagement bait’ is diverse in the application. There are outright spam posts from everyone and their dog sharing the exact kind of copypasta that reaches Facebook audiences (here’s a great recent example). Some of the types of content are accounts that tend to post an open-ended AskReddit-style question. And then there are the rage-bait posts, as Business Insider’s Katie Notopoulos chronicled late last year.

Also Read

• Mark Zuckerberg launches Instagram’s Threads, similar to Twitter – here is how it works
• Nigeria must feed its people and have enough for export – Tinubu
• Threads in introducing location sharing for posts
• Tinubu: We’re sustaining investments in digital technology to enhance the sustainability of small businesses

The posts that one makes are sometimes regarding matters that would rub many a user the wrong way, given that the opinion is from someone they do not know appearing on their timeline. For instance, I’ve witnessed hundreds of threads that have gained numerous comments regarding the fact that children under a certain age should be allowed to travel by aeroplane. Notopoulos, in her experiment, reached more than 1 million views and received 5000 replies on the post which is based on the two-year-old Twitter and Reddit thread about not feeding kids visiting for playdates.

While Mosseri and Meta have not said why manipulating Threads’ algorithm to reach millions of people with this kind of post has been so simple, this appears to have to do with how the app has ranked replies in determining what to show a user. The head of Instagram responded that not all comments or replies are good.

Source: Engadget