Threads Has An 'Engagement-Bait' Problem

Meta's Threads app is becoming overrun by engagement bait -- or polarizing content created to elicit impassioned responses from users, according to a post by Instagram head Adam Mosseri, who said the company is trying to “get it under control.”

While engagement bait exists in various forms, it has a unified goal of triggering users into responding, and therefore engaging with the app -- raising the question of whether all engagement is good engagement for an up-and-coming platform like Threads.

In his response to a user flagging a post clearly designed to “trigger angry comments,” Mosseri acknowledged that “not all comments or replies are good,” adding that while some replies should be elevated, replies to engagement bait posts like these should not.

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However, due to Threads' algorithmic feed, which shows users posts by default, the platform is technically designed to push as many interactions as it can, causing replies to go viral regardless of the content being engaged with.

Perhaps the best example of this budding issue is Business Insider's Katie Notopoulos' recent report on experimenting with the Threads algorithm.

In posting clear engagement bait posts on the app, Notopoulos found that they became “almost too successful,” with users replying to a single post days after it was first published.

For example, the reporter garnered over 1 million views and 5,000 replies on a post about not feeding children who come over for a play date.

Because Threads and its competitor X devised their creator-payment models to compensate creators based on the performance of their posts, there is an obvious incentive to publish more polarizing content, playing directly to the algorithm.

While engagement bait exists on all social-media platforms, it seems to especially infringe upon Threads' original mission of providing users with an alternative to platforms like X, where controversial posts are celebrated despite their incitement of toxic in-app behavior.

Mosseri has yet to provide any insight into what Meta is planning to do about Threads’ engagement bait issue.

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