Home » US business news » Threads joins Twitter in limiting post visibility after spam attacks

Threads joins Twitter in limiting post visibility after spam attacks

By Nagasunder in US business news, posted July 18, 2023

Meta's new social media app, Threads, is following Twitter’s move to limit the visibility of posts for certain users.

The company says the new service has already been hit by spam attacks which means it will have to make changes weeks after launching.

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri explained: “Spam attacks have picked up so we’re going to have to get tighter on things like rate limits, which is going to mean more unintentionally limiting active people (false positives).”

Meta launched Threads when Twitter was facing backlash for restricting the number of daily post views.

The new app soon garnered significant attention and became one of the most downloaded social media apps in the US shortly after its launch.

Interestingly, Threads cited the same reason as Twitter—spam—as the cause for implementing these limitations.

Twitter owner Elon Musk initially said rate limits were intended to combat "data scraping."

But the firm later clarified it aimed primarily at “detect and eliminate bots and other bad actors that are harming the platform.”

Twitter's strict rate limits were in effect for only a few days.

No specific timeframe has been provided for how long the rate limits on Threads will remain in place.

In response to a tweet featuring a screenshot of Mosseri's announcement, Musk seemed amused.

Although Threads, marketed as the companion app to Instagram, quickly gained 100 million users within five days of its launch, it still has much to prove as a long-term competitor to Twitter.

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Pinar Yildirim, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in social networks, suggests users must now evaluate their preferences between the two platforms.

Yildirim highlights the significance of addressing the bot issue, a major concern for Twitter.

Data from Google Trends indicates a decline in search interest for Threads since its initial launch.

Threads remains unavailable for download in Europe due to European Union data privacy regulations.

Following Mosseri's announcement, the company provided little information beyond what was shared in the post.

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