Adam Mosseri, head of Threads and Instagram, today announced that Threads is launching a new feature that lets you filter out words and phrases from your feed and mentions. The “Hidden Words” feature automatically mutes common words, phrases, and emojis that may be offensive to users. In addition to these preset filters, users can add their own custom words and phrases to the settings. Users can turn off these settings at any time.
Earlier this week, dating app Hinge launched its own “Hidden Words” feature (yes, it's the same name) that blocks requests with comments containing unwanted words.
Image credit: Thread
According to the thread, the feature will exclude content from both the “Following” and “For You” feeds, search results, profiles, and replies to posts.
Controls for citing posts
The Meta-owned social network now allows users to control who can reply to their posts: everyone, profiles they follow, and only people mentioned. Threads also have options to limit who can mention you in posts, replies, and bios. Everyone, the profiles you follow, or no one.
The company is now planning to introduce similar controls for quote postings. According to the thread, you'll soon be able to limit who can quote your posts. Additionally, users can also manually unquote their own posts.
The company's rationale behind these new controls on quote posts is that it wants to limit unwanted interactions.
“Citing a post is one of the most visible ways to connect with someone on a thread, so it gives people more discretion over who can engage with them and reduces unwanted interactions. It was important,” a company spokesperson said.
Separately, Threads is also testing ways to mute notifications for interactions with posts. Although some of these features aren't available yet, the company has started testing ways to automatically archive posts and is still releasing new features at a fast pace.
Image credit: Thread
During Meta's earnings call on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg said Threads has more than 150 million monthly active users.