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Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

My threads feed started OK at launch but now is a wasteland of pointless rage bait and r/antiwork style content. I'm sure it's popular but it's not what I want to read.

On X I get mostly informative ML and robotics content. Of course it took some curation and liberal use of the "Mute Words" feature to get there. But I just don't think that content is there on Threads.

My go-to example of why I don't like what's happening on Threads is Jeff Bezos's last post: https://www.threads.net/@jeffbezos/post/CyFInFjrRxs/?igshid=... The replies are an absolute cesspool. Everything people used to accuse Twitter of being and more.

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> My threads feed started OK at launch but now is a wasteland of pointless rage bait and r/antiwork style content. I'm sure it's popular but it's not what I want to read.

FWIW, you don't have to use Threads' "For You" feed (the equivalent of X's algorithmic feed) at all. But if you like the kismet of seeing other posts, blocking liberally will sort that out.

The recommendation algorithm is pretty awful and needs a lot of intervention to start surfacing great content. Life got a lot better once I started clicking "hide" on particularly egregious posts and avoiding interaction. It seems to disproportionately weight "click to view" interactions so avoiding morbid curiosity when seeing a bad take helps.

If there weren't pressure to use it for my small side business I'd have given up on it almost immediately.

> wasteland of pointless rage bait

This was also my experience.

So it's exactly what Twitter people wanted it to be?

It seems to be what happens when a bunch of people whose common trait is hatred of Elon Musk come together to start a community.

My only interaction with threads is through suggested posts from Instagram. I think I made the mistake of clicking on one to see what stupid thing someone was claiming. That is all it shows me now. Frustrating for multiple reasons.

Why do people enjoy this stuff.

Too much anti-X (anti-Musk) trolling on Threads. Threads users really need to focus on building something good themselves, rather than simply attacking the incumbent.

It feels like the whole purpose of Threads is just one-upmanship against Elon Musk, and as such, it's just a hollow shell of a community.

Pointless rage-bait Threads content regularly comes up on Instagram and I find it a turn-off for the new social network.

Isn't the same true for twitter nowadays?

It depends entirely on how well you've managed your follows, likes, and comments to train the algorithm.

Only NPCs expect good, uplifting content to be handed to them without work.

This applies to both X and Threads.

This is not true for Mastodon though because it's not mainstream. Niche servers with people passionate about certain subjects; active niche communities with great content. Kind of like hacker news. This is also why I was scared of Threads using ActivityPub, I don't want my precious small mastodon instances getting flooded with mainstream content.

I mean popular person's tweets getting hijacked with nonsensical but ragebait responses.

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