In the wake of agreeing that Threads, a competitor to Meta’s X, won't prioritize political content, the company has revealed a new feature to test trends titled "topics." Threads is set to begin a scaled-down test in the U.S., as declared by Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg, intended to assist users in discovering "timely topics" under discussion on the platform.
"Today’s topics", the section's title, derives from Meta's AI mechanism based on user engagement on Threads, informed Meta to TechCrunch. These topics will be featured on the Search page and in the For You feed within the app. The machine learning protocol takes into account various factors, such as the number of conversations and interactions on a specific topic.
Meta ensures that the surfaced topics align with the site’s Community Guidelines and other relevant integrity guidelines through the company's team of content experts. This team also checks for any duplicate topics and verifies that the featured topics are not "nonsensical or misleading". Besides, users can report any potentially inappropriate content that slips past the site’s moderators but violates the guidelines.
An important question arose concerning Meta's stance on curtailing political content within these topics, following their announcement to not recommend it across different platforms like Instagram and Threads. The change affects Instagram Reels, Instagram Explore, and In-Feed Recommendations on both Instagram and Threads. However, Meta has confirmed that they will not suppress politically themed topics unless they violate any guidelines.
As topics are identified by algorithms and not personalized for users, they remain unaffected by the Threads' political content recommendation purge. This feature could position Threads competitively with X, formerly Twitter, by providing users an avenue to engage in timely discussions, thereby fostering a real-time feel. The extent of human supervision towards this section remains crucial, which could either fully oversee or primarily rely on an algorithm.