Adam Mosseri, Instagram CEO, apologizes for the abundance of low-quality Threads suggestions

You may have observed a noticeable change in the types of posts being recommended on the Instagram feed due to the integration of Threads. Regardless of your usage of Threads, you might be encountering an abundance of content that holds no interest for you or engagement bait that appears to be copied. In the worst-case scenario, hate speech is prevalent. In response to a question during an Ask Me Anything session, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, expressed regret for the presence of “low-quality recommendations” on Threads and assured that the team is actively working on resolving this issue.

“We want people to have a positive experience on Threads, and in the last few weeks we’ve actually had issues with low-quality referrals,” Mosseri said, “things that don’t exactly violate our community rules — which is we’ll remove content entirely — but we’re kind of going all the way there. We’re working on it to improve. A lot of them should be fixed at this point.” He goes on to say that while “there’s a lot more work to be done,” users can “expect it to get a lot better over the next few weeks. Again, sorry.”

While Threads already felt inundated with posts aimed at drumming up engagement as new users try to gain followers on the burgeoning social site, things have recently taken a noticeably darker turn. Suddenly, ragebait seems to be front and center. Users have complained that they are being suggested an alarming amount of hateful content, particularly posts that are downright transphobic. It’s crept into my own feeds, so much so that I feel like I’ve muted more accounts in the last two weeks than I did in the previous six months on Threads.

ReturnByte asked Meta for clarification on whether the improvements mentioned by Mosser specifically address transphobia and other forms of hate speech. In response, a spokesperson echoed Mosser’s comments, saying, “In addition to removing content that violates our community guidelines, we are aware that some users see this type of repetitive, low-quality content that they may not be interested in. We are taking steps to address this.”