Instagram boss Adam Mosseri has responded to calls for a Threads home feed that only contains posts from the accounts he follows, saying it’s “on the list” of features the platform would like to add. Mosseri sent the message in response to a post by YouTuber Marques Brownlee requesting the function, as well as for Photographer Noah Kalina. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also weighed in, posting a thumbs up emoji in response to Brownlee’s request.
If your first experience with Meta’s Twitter competitor is anything like mine, chances are your home feed is full of posts from random accounts recommended by the service’s algorithm along with content from accounts you actually decided to follow. For me, these recommended posts far exceed the content I actually chose to see, but it’s hard to know how much of this is because Threads launched only a few hours ago and is still onboarding new users. in their millions.
Although both Adam Mosseri and Mark Zuckerberg have actively responded to requests, their posts are far from a firm commitment to add the feature. But given that the main Instagram app already offers a similar option for feeds that includes a dedicated “Following” list, it seems possible that Threads would take a similar approach. However, in the case of Instagram, the feed containing recommendations remains the default.
Meta has been much more open about its future plans to integrate Threads with ActivityPub, the decentralized social networking protocol that provides the foundation for rival microblogging service Mastodon. Eventually, the hope is that Threads users will be able to interact with those on other ActivityPub-based services. Support for the protocol could even allow a Threads user to take their audience with them if they ever leave the service, Adam Mosseri told my colleague Alex Heath in a recent interview.
