Yes, we now call it “ThreadsDeck”.
At least that’s the label many are using to describe Instagram competitor X’s new UI, Threads, which resembles the column-based format of Twitter’s old app, TweetDeck (now X Pro). Two weeks after first testing the feature that lets Threads users pin columns to the home screen of its desktop web app, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced Thursday that this alternative view was starting to roll out globally – just in time for everyone to discuss it. The hottest political news of the year: the Trump verdict.
The new UI option positions Threads as a more serious from Instagram. In February, the company announced that Instagram and Threads would no longer “proactively” recommend political content — an odd choice for a potential election-year competitor to Twitter/X.
It’s not difficult to understand why the company made this decision. Meta has repeatedly been drawn into the political fray, particularly in the United States, where she has been accused by Republicans of censoring free speech and by Democrats of being too lenient on misinformation and disinformation . With its entry into the real-time social media space and its positioning of Threads as an alternative public forum to Elon Musk’s X, Meta quickly caught the attention of House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan ( R-OH) last year.
When Threads was only a few weeks old, Jordan wrote to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to ask about the app’s content moderation policies. Here we go againMeta probably thought.
Instead of dealing with the headache, Threads turned its back on politics. The company said it will not proactively insert political content into Threads’ In-Feed recommendations or recommend it on various surfaces on Instagram.
But even if Threads wanted to avoid the creator content policy, its users don’t.
Even after the policy change, political content regularly dominated Threads trends. When President Biden delivered his State of the Union address in March, for example, terms referring to the speech itself, the heckling, and the Republican response were trending. Today, the network is full of discussions related to the Trump verdict, as you would expect on any real-time social platform.
Easier to follow the news in real time
With the previous Threads UI, following different topics, threads, and discussions was much more difficult and, importantly, didn’t feel real-time. To move from a For You feed to a Next feed, you had to click back and forth. There was no easy way to track an area of interest continuously. That changes with Threads’ alternative column-based layout, which users have affectionately nicknamed “ThreadsDeck.”
You can now pin For You and Followers feeds side by side, as well as your Liked, Saved, Profile, Activity, or Search feeds that highlight top trends. More importantly, you can search for any topic you want to track – “Trump,” for example – and add that in a separate column, too.
Additionally, any column outside of the For You feed can be enabled to allow automatic updates, like TweetDeck. Best of all, it’s not a subscriber-only feature like X Pro.
This change goes a long way toward making Threads look, feel, and function more like Twitter/X, regardless of the corporate ban Meta has implemented regarding political content.
The ban is confusing users, who don’t understand how Meta will decide what content to block. Won’t a photo of Taylor Swift be recommended if she’s holding “Biden-Harris” cookies? » a user recently asked while posting a test of the algorithm.
Mosseri attempted to clarify that the company’s work on policy takes place “primarily at the account level, not the position level.” He also tried to explain again that Threads was not “anti-news”; it simply wouldn’t amplify political news.
“News on sports, music, fashion and culture is something we actively seek out. Political news is the subject (we) seek to be more careful,” he said in a response.
In each instance where he brings up this topic, users’ responses fill the thread, expressing their disagreement with Meta’s position.
Some of these shots were more nuanced than others.
“There is simply no way a viable, real-time social media platform can get by without being, in part, a news platform,” chided technology journalist Lance Ulanoff. “Build on that and figure out how to support all of that in a way that avoids the mistakes of anyone left in your wake.” »
Another simply shouted: “GIVE US AN NEWS!” »
At least users no longer need to wait for Meta to change its mind: they can customize the app to meet their request for real-time, automatically updated information on various topics, including politics .
If Threads succeeds in supplanting X as a news platform, it will be despite its misguided policies on political content, not because of them. And because it finally gave users the tools – via “ThreadsDeck” – to create the application they wanted themselves.
techcrunch
