Instagram Threads: The problem with the “everything for everyone” approach

Totally. I think they did the exact right thing. Brilliant strategy because not only does it kick start the network, but it introduces a entirely new group of people to text based social media that never tried/were into Twitter.

> So what ends up happening on sites like TikTok is that you have to start very quickly swiping through your feed until something related pops up, and pausing for too long will undo your progress.

FYI, TikTok also has explicit like/dislike signals. For example, you can love posts, or long-press the video and choose "Not Interested".

Instagram's "explore" page works pretty excellently for this; each post on the grid there is essentially a separate feed. For example on mine the top several posts are: queer art, Zelda, car crash videos, less specific art, 40k memes, politics relevant to me, cat memes, and so on. Each of those is something that Instagram has good reason to think I'd like, and the posts stay fairly consistent with the vibe of the first post as I scroll through any of those feeds.

agreed, pre-social media people “stayed on brand” because thats all you ever saw of them

nobody needs to know their favorite stoic keynote speaker does anything else

I was briefly in a Facebook A/B test that automatically categorized every post by everyone. I then had the option to "Unfollow Alice for posts about Politics". It was glorious, and I always wonder why they never released that broadly.

Half response/half commentary:

I think it just comes down to if you see yourself as an entertainer or not.

Social media based on a social graph forces you to be niche because you have to be that proxy for interest. i.e. it's. better to have three people who post about tech, British politics, and Seinfeld separately than one person who posts about Seinfeld one day, politics the next and tech the next because it is impossible for me to curate my feed correctly.

Ironically, If you ONLY posted about the tech of all of the political scenes in Seinfeld that included British actors, that would be fine.

If you don't see yourself as an entertainer, or put another way, if you're not trying to build an audience, then you can bring your whole self or post about whatever you're interested and passionate about knowing that people will be upset when you don't post what they are interested in and that you won't build as big of a following.

A 50% hit rate is pretty good.

There is a widespread tendency on HN to complain about various forms of noise/distraction. Whether it is the unusability of the web without an ad blocker, or the apparently impossible task of using Google these days (too many useless links returned).

I strongly feel that, unless you have some acknowledged difficulty in dealing with extraneous information, it is just not reasonable to expect the world's data to be presented to you prefiltered, "on a plate". If you do have a recognized problem with information overload, you'll have to accept that some info sources are not for you. This is not ableism.

can I ask what account, out of curiosity?

I had a similar experience on Twitter. There was this guy who used to talk a lot about technical details related to his successful rocket business. But over time that stuff was replaced by right-wing culture war politics. Sad.

People really just like the drama, you can tell with the “smells blood in the water” bit.

I would agree if A) Threads didn't just add 100M users overnight, and B) if Twitter wasn't a spam-filled shitshow.

It's undeniable that Twitter is a failing product. Their advertisements are literal basement-tier garbage... I see the type of ads that normally fill your spam inbox. The blue checkmarks seem like they're all Elon sycophants and thus you are forced to interact with a bunch of weirdos as the top replies to any post. It just feels like walking into a Walmart at 1am, vs Threads which feels like Target on a weekday.

“Threads will be forgotten just like Vision Pro was”

This statement makes absolutely no sense, considering you are using the past tense to refer to a product that hasn’t even been built and released yet.

Existing inside a media hype bubble does wonders for traction, but it's not the only way a platform gains users. It also happens when your friends keeps linking you to the posts they read on it.

Twitter is looking more and more like a dead mall with the most insane possible management. Diehard shoppers huddled the last couple active sections.

This is not good the internet. But the further consolidation is on Elon's hands, not metas. If want a healthy internet back it's gonna take bell labs levels of antitrust enforcement, which won't be happening. Twitter will likely be flattened under the weight of their clear technical superiority in the sector.

I followed that strategy and was happy to see that the sports accounts I like hopped on Threads too. However, I only want to see those accounts. When they don't post much (as is the case right now during the offseason), Threads spams you with all sorts of random celebrities and influencers, who have nothing to do with the sports accounts I like.

Instagram has 500M DAU / 2B MAU. A huge chunk of Meta's MAU come from Whatsapp, and Threads isn't promoted there.

Ah, but you don't have to. Just use your Facebook account to sign into Instagram and then sign into Threads with that. Facebook will thank you for saving them the smallest of effort it takes to connect your identities.

> Once they find Thread's specific purpose

They already have that purpose. It's to make a better Twitter.

And given the significant drop in Twitter traffic it's working.

I’ve heard this a lot on both sides, but have been on the sidelines until about 2 months ago.

I finally caved and got back onto Facebook after nearly 10 years off.

The first night I went in, added all of the people in my local BNI chapter and everyone I knew from my gym. My goal was to focus exclusively on local community building and staying in touch with people I’d probably see again soon.

I closed out of the app for the night, came back the next morning, and my timeline was 20% women in a jungle setting taking off their clothing. We counted, it was 1 in 5 posts.

Unless they already had a shadow profile for me, this seems to be some sort of default for my demographic (gender and age). I can’t imagine “small business and gym” would yield this outcome.

It has taken almost a month to eliminate actual soft pornography from my timeline by reporting it. But still my timeline is full of sexually suggestive and offensive material.

In fact, my timeline is only about 33% my local community. Everything else is a hodgepodge of random garbage content getting jammed into my feed. From DIY pro-tips that’ll get you killed to sexually suggestive memes.

I wish I could turn off recommended content.

It’s confirmed my reason for being reluctant to rejoin Meta for the last 10 years. I’ve almost caved and purchased the Oculus, but I’m back in the “nope, no Meta” camp. Facebook is a downright awful experience, both technically, socially, and mentally.

I get cats, dogs, and memes, but I can't escape occasional terrible 4chan posts, people dying in car crashes, and, yeah, quasi-pornographic reels.

I assume their algorithm for me points my interest in technology and memes to 4chan reposts; my interest in the gym and weightlifting to nearly naked women; and I have no clue why it wants me to watch people die.

This is all speculation from me trying to follow the data points I assume they know about me. But I don't want to see those posts -- I always use the not interested button, don't interact, and my other traffic on Instagram really shouldn't point me this way.

All this said, I don't use Instagram as much anymore, and have been entertaining deleting my account. I haven't yet because I advertise and communicate on Instagram quite a bit.

is this meant to be an argument against blogs? why would you even want the latter audience

I hear this defense a lot, but isn't it kind of problematic that a platform makes you go out of your way to tell them you prefer not to see soft-core porn? I didn't even know TikTok had a "Not Interested" button until someone told me in person. It's completely hidden.

I've personally seen this come up on a lot of different social media apps that feature video content. They all initially throw a bunch of vaguely pornographic content at you to start with and continue doing so unless you keep opting out for long enough. I kinda wonder how many users never make it past the initial onslaught and just assume the entire platform is like that.

As opposed to Twitter happily showing users an almost endless feed of hardcore pornography?

Reality TV has been softcore pornography for about a decade now, advertisers have no issue with it

But then turn around and ban actual, non-porn sex ed accounts.

Only if you subscribe to it. And it's no different to what you see on Netflix etc.

> vaccines, gender identity, and the culture wars. The only reason people are talking about these things is because of Elon. There is no current event that precipitated them.

Gender identity politics are tied to a rather high frequency stream of current events; similar to racial politics in the 1950s-1960s, as are the culture wars of which they are a major current battleground (again, just as racial politics were in the 1950s-1960s.)

For vaccines, the main driving force for the issue’s current attention is RFK, Jr.’s Presidential campaign, which is certainly a current event.

If you think Elon is the reason people are talking about those things and not current events, you need to crawl out of whatever filter bubble is shielding you from current events (or just stopping arguing based on your supposed knowledge of them if you are content in that bubble.)

The 100M stat means nothing to me because of integration with Instagram. It's not like they cultivated an audience of 100M people in 5 days.

Suppose Instagram added the ability to create text threads in addition to photos, except they did this as an Instagram feature instead of a separate app. A week later, we find that 10% of Instagram users viewed one of these threads. Would that be significant?

OpenAI had organic growth which is not directly comparable to a product launched off of existing Instagram users.

I think it's sarcasm

X the everything app. It’s very different from Threads