If you’re active on Meta’s Threads app, you’ve probably noticed a certain amount of engagement bait in your “For You” feed. Now, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has acknowledged the issue, saying the company is “working to get it under control” after a rise in such posts.
“We’ve seen an increase in engagement-bait on Threads and we’re working to get it under control,” Mosseri said in a post on Threads. He didn’t specify what steps the company is taking, but said there will be “more action to take” on the issue.
Mosseri’s comments are the first time a Meta executive has acknowledged the problem that has become a major topic of discussion on Threads. Since the app defaults to an algorithmic “For You” feed, engagement bait style posts that attract lots of replies often go viral on the app, even if it’s the type of content many users say they don’t want to see.
But addressing the issue can be difficult because what people often call “engagement bait” takes many forms across the app.
There are spammy posts that copypaste content that gets widely shared on Facebook (here’s a particularly egregious recent example). There are accounts that post AskReddit-style open-ended questions. And then there are anger-inducing posts, as recently documented by Business Insider’s Katie Notopoulos.
Those posts, which often touch on polarizing topics, seem to be there only to elicit angry responses from other users who have a controversial opinion from someone they don’t know and who they put in their timeline.
For example, I’ve seen dozens of posts with hundreds of replies about whether young children should be allowed on airplanes. In his experiment, Notopoulos got more than 1 million views and 5,000 replies on a post — which was heavily inspired by a two-year-old viral tweet and Reddit post — about not feeding kids when they come over to play.
And while Mosseri and Meta didn’t explain why it’s proven so easy to game Threads’ algorithm to go viral with this kind of content, it seems to have something to do with how the app prioritizes replies in deciding what to show users.
“Not all comments or replies are good,” Mosseri said. Instagram chief Adam Mosseri made another announcement this weekend on Threads on Sunday, the timing of which definitely has nothing to do with the shutdown of TikTok and other ByteDance-owned apps (for a short time): A new, free video-editing app called Edits is coming.
Instagram’s Edits will be aimed at people who edit videos on their phones, and will offer “a full suite of creative tools.” This includes high-quality recordings, shareable drafts, trending audio, information about your Reels’ performance, and an “inspiration tab” in addition to the usual editing tools.
If all this reminds you of TikTok’s companion app for video editing, CapCut, you’re not alone. In response to the immediate comparisons, Mosseri called Edits “CapCut, but more for creators than casual video makers.”
Edits isn’t available yet, but you can pre-order it on the App Store if you’re an iOS user, and Mosseri says an Android version is “coming soon.” While he’s said a February release, the App Store page says March 13.
And don’t expect anything too polished when it does arrive. “The first version is going to be unfinished, so please be patient, but I’m really excited to get it into your hands,” Mosseri said.