Meta tests trending topics feature on Threads platform

Meta Platforms Inc. announced today that it will soon begin testing its Trending Topics feature on Threads, X's competing social network, in the United States.

“For those of you who have been asking for the Trends feature, we're rolling out a small test in the U.S. to help you find timely topics that people are talking about,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a statement. Ta. “Today's topics for threads appear on the search page and in the For You feed.”

These topics include political content, which may be confusing given what happened last week, but Meta is working with Instagram by preventing such content from appearing in the platform's recommended feed. They announced that they would be restricting such content on Threads. “Our goal is to preserve people's ability to choose to interact with political content while respecting each person's desire for political content,” Mosseri said at the time.

But the company announced today that if enough people engage with a particular story, political content will appear in the trending topics area of ​​threads. It employs machine learning algorithms to understand what people are talking about on the platform and how much time they spend talking about it. This feature will be rolled out to other countries soon.

This is a very sensitive time for social media companies, given the upcoming elections in the United States and the many other elections taking place around the world in 2024. Companies can be accused of unwarranted moderation or helping spread political misinformation. “Content experts will review topics selected by our AI system” in an effort to reduce such activity, Mosseri said.

These experts ensure that trending content doesn't violate the company's community guidelines and remove posts that are deemed “pointless or misleading.” Users of the thread will also be given the ability to flag posts that violate certain guidelines or are patently false. Meta says that removing trending topics for other reasons, namely to appease users who believe that social media companies are biased and are hiding certain political topics, is not a good idea. He said no.

Meta hopes that by being more relevant to the conversations people are having during this turbulent year, Threads can catch up with competitor X. The network got off to a good start, gaining 70 million users soon after its launch. We still have a long way to go before we catch up with X. X averages over 500 million monthly active users, while Threads has 130 million monthly active users.

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