Threads will be adding an alternate home feed to posts as part of a series of updates to the new social media app after users complained.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, said a “topics” feed that would display posts in chronological order is currently in the works.
Users want to see posts from accounts they follow rather than being selected by a topic algorithm.
Mr Mosseri said the new feed was “on the list” of changes to the topics.
Meta, which owns Thread, Instagram and Facebook, launched the social media app last week and more than 100 million users have signed up to use it.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has given an “awesome” alternative feed, Mosseri said, after a number of users expressed frustration with Feed not showing posts from people they follow, in the order in which they were posted.
Other features “on the list”, according to Mr Mosseri, include:
- The ability to edit posts
- Translation into different languages
- Making it easier to switch between different thread accounts
While it’s possible to view threads on the web, via Thread.net there’s no desktop interface — posts can only be created via the app — and that’s also something the company has been “working on,” according to Mr Mosseri.
There is also no search function. When the company announced the app’s launch, it said it would add “more powerful search functionality” along with improvements to the selection of recommended posts.
Meanwhile, currently the only way to completely delete a Topics profile is to delete the associated Instagram account, which many users may be reluctant to do — another issue the company is looking to fix.
When Threads launched, Meta announced that it plans to allow it to communicate with other social media platforms, such as Mastodon, using something known as Fediverse.
However, this proposal was met with opposition, although some welcomed it.
The idea of the universe is like email. A person on Gmail can exchange emails with someone using Hotmail, for example, and union can be described as applying this idea to social media.
At some point in the future, Meta wants users to be able to use their Thread account to interact with other social media platforms using ActivityPub — a protocol with the necessary programming code — like Mastodon, WordPress, or Reddit-Alternative Lemmy.
But some worry that threads threaten the very idea of such a system, because of a practice Big Tech has used in the past — “embrace, extend and extinguish,” when a company with plenty of resources expands what’s possible from a new technology so radically the new standard has become, leaving People have no choice but to use his platform.
Mastodon CEO Eugene Roshko dismisses these concerns, saying that Meta joining Threads was an “affirmation of the movement toward decentralized social media” and “a clear victory for our cause.”
But concern has grown among users with more than a hundred Mastodon communities joining what they call “Videbact” – an agreement to prevent Meta from accessing their community under any circumstances – so even when threads start supporting ActivityPub, users won’t. Being able to access everything in the universe.
Another feature coming to threads at some point may also receive mixed reviews. There are no ads on the platform – for now