We all know algorithms run our digital lives, but rarely can we peek behind the curtain to see how that content actually ends up in our feeds.
Lucky for us, Meta has an explainer on how your Threads feed actually works. Spoiler alert: It requires tracking you and every other user across Meta apps, just to make the best guess as to whether you’ll actually engage with that post at the top of your feed.
How does your Threads feed work?
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, your Threads feed is powered by AI. Its goal is to float content that it thinks you’ll want to engage with to the top.
Meta explains that this AI program starts by gathering some of the public content posted on Threads, in addition to all of the content posted by accounts you actually follow. Once it rounds up this content, it analyzes the content, looking for trends based on content you’ve interacted with in the past. Last, the system ranks this content, putting the posts it thinks you’ll most likely interact with first.
That’s it in a nutshell, at least according to Meta. Of course, that seems mostly obvious, which is why learning how Meta’s AI actually delivers content is more interesting. The company dives a bit deeper into the mechanisms behind the AI and how it makes its predictions for your feed:
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Whether or not you’ll like a post: The AI thinks about how many posts you’ve seen in your feed, how many you’ve liked, as well as how many times you’ve liked a particular account’s posts.
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How likely you are to follow this account: To predict this likelihood, Meta’s AI looks at how many posts you’ve seen in your feed, when the last time you were active on Threads was, which accounts you recently followed, whether or not the post was predicted to violate Meta’s Community Guidelines, as well as how many times you looked at that account on Instagram.
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How likely you are to scroll past a post: To figure out whether you’re more likely to engage with a post or simply scroll past, the AI looks at the amount of time you viewed a post, how many times you liked an account’s post, and how many times the post was viewed by others. (That’s right: It’s not all about you.)
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How likely you are to look at replies on a post: The AI wants to guess whether you’ll look at the replies on a given post by checking how many times other users have looked at the replies on the post, how many replies you’ve personally seen, how many times you liked that account’s posts, and how long it’s been since the last time you used Threads.
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How likely you are to visit the profile of the account that posted: The AI figures this one out by checking how many times the author’s profile has been visited, the profile click rate on the account, whether or not the post was predicted to violate Community Guidelines, how many times you looked at the account on Instagram, and the number of times people looked at the account’s profile.
In summary, you are always being tracked on not just Threads, but Instagram as well—not just you, but all Threads and Instagram users, too. The AI uses all this data to predict how you’ll behave on Threads, and, depending on your actual activity, the cycle starts anew.
How to customize your Threads feed
At the end of the day, your feed is what you make of it. Meta wants you to engage more on Threads, so it’s going to try to serve you the content it thinks you’ll engage with most. If you go out of your way to demonstrate which types of posts you actually want to see, the AI will start to correct for that. Meta outlines those steps you can take to actually have an impact on your feed, reducing the chances to see posts you’re not interested in, and increasing the chances of seeing content you want.
Most things are obvious here: If you don’t like an account’s posts, unfollow or mute them. If you’re particularly offended by the content, you can hide or report it. However, Meta encourages you to share posts you’re interested in: By sharing a thread you like, you tell the algorithm to show you more like it. Not explicitly mentioned here is commenting: If you open the replies enough, Meta knows you’re interested in the conversations of certain types of posts. If you engage in that conversation by commenting, all the better. Finally, if you’re sick of seeing general posts from all over Threads, you can switch your feed to only show you content from accounts you actually follow. If you tap the Threads logo at the top, you can switch to Following instead of For you.