Meta promises a fix to Threads’ engagement bait problem

Threads is notorious for engagement bait, and Meta knows it. And they’re going to try to fix it, too — allegedly.

This revelation came as many updates on Threads do: through a conversation on the app itself.

Two days ago, a Threads user posted a fake image of an old lady wearing a miniskirt on the subway.

“Don’t tell me that it’s okay to wear mini-skirts after 50! There should be a point when we acknowledge our age and start dressing accordingly, right? Or am I the only one who feels this way?” the poster wrote.

This is, obviously, engagement bait, a post specifically designed not to say something interesting but to get other people to interact with it. And it worked: The post has over 4,400 likes, 20,200 replies, 316 reposts, and was sent 202 times. It’s just one example of a myriad of engagement bait posts created by the account, and it isn’t the only account doing it.

In response to the post, Dave Lee, a tech columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, said, “You’d think Meta would have learned the lesson of ‘engagement = good’ after all these years.”

Another user responded to Lee, pointing out that Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Meta, which owns Threads, said in an interview with Verge earlier this year that “the fundamental defining aspect of [Twitter’s] format is that when you make a post, the comments aren’t subordinate to the post. The comments are kind of at a peer level.” To the user, this indicated that Zuckerberg “explicitly said he believes more comments = better content.”

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram and Threads, and a pretty consistent replier, responded to the users’ post.

“Not all comments or replies are good. Mark’s comment is more about the Twitter pioneering a format where the reply can be elevated, which is a good thing, but that doesn’t mean that every reply should be,” Mosseri posted.

He added that they have “seen an increase in engagement-bait on Threads and we’re working to get it under control. More to come.”