Yes, we're calling it “ThreadsDeck” now.
At least, that's the tag many are using to describe the new user interface of Instagram's X rival Threads, which resembles the column-based format of Twitter's old app TweetDeck (now X Pro). Two weeks after Threads first tested a feature that let users pin columns to their desktop web app home screens, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced Thursday that the alternative view was starting to roll out globally, just in time for everyone to discuss the hottest political news of the year: Trump's verdict.
The new user interface options position Threads as a stronger competitor to X for people looking for real-time news and information, especially since it allows users to get around Meta's ill-considered decision to distance itself from political discussion across Instagram's platforms. In February, the company announced that both Instagram and Threads would no longer “actively” recommend political content, a strange choice for a Twitter/X rival in an election year.
It's not hard to understand why the company made this decision. Meta has been embroiled in political controversies on multiple occasions, particularly in the US, where it has been accused by Republicans of censoring free speech and being too soft on misinformation and disinformation. With its entry into the real-time social networking space and positioning Threads as a public forum alternative to Elon Musk's X, Meta quickly caught the attention of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) last year.
Just a few weeks after Threads was released, Jordan sent a question to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the app's content moderation policies. Meta must have thought, Here we go again.
Instead of addressing the headaches, Threads turned its back on politics, saying the company would not actively insert political content into Threads' in-feed recommendations or promote it in different places across Instagram.
But while Threads wanted to prioritize creator content and steer clear of politics, its users didn't.
Even after the change, political content continued to regularly dominate trending threads: When President Biden delivered his State of the Union address in March, for example, terms related to the speech itself, heckling and the Republican response trended. Now, the network is abuzz with discussion about Trump's ruling, as one would expect on a real-time social platform.
Easy to follow the news in real time
Threads' previous user interface made it much harder to follow different topics, threads, and discussions, and importantly, it lacked a real-time feel. You had to click back and forth to move between your For You and Following feeds; there was no easy way to continually track areas of interest. This changes with Threads' alternative column-based layout, which users are calling “ThreadsDeck.”
Image credit: Screenshot from Threads
Now you can pin your “Featured” and “Following” feeds side-by-side, plus search feeds that highlight your Likes, Saved, Profile, Activity, or Top Trends. Most importantly, you can search for any topic you want to track (e.g. “Trump”) and add it as a separate column.
Plus, any column outside of the “For You” feed can be toggled to enable auto-refresh, just like TweetDeck. Even better, it's not a subscriber-only feature like X Pro.
This change will go a long way towards making threads look, feel, and behave more like Twitter/X, regardless of what corporate bans Meta has in place regarding political content.
The ban has confused users who don't understand how Meta decides what content to block: Should a photo of Taylor Swift holding a “Biden-Harris” cookie be disrespected? one user recently wondered in a test post of the algorithm.
Mosseri tried to clarify that the company's political work “is primarily done at the account level, not the post level,” and tried to explain again that Threads is not “anti-news” and does not just “amplify political news.”
“Sports, music, fashion and culture news are what we actively pursue. Political news is [we] “I'm going to be more careful,” he said in his response.
Every time he brings up the issue, the thread is flooded with replies from users voicing their opposition to Meta's position.
Some of those takes were more nuanced than others.
“You can't have a viable real-time social media platform without also being partly a news platform,” accuses technology journalist Lance Ulanoff. “Lean into that and figure out how to support it all in a way that avoids the mistakes that everyone who follows suit makes.”
Another simply yelled, “Give us the news!”
At the very least, users no longer have to wait for Meta to change their mind: they can now customize the app to meet their demand for real-time, automatically updated information on a variety of topics, including politics.
If Threads succeeds in replacing X as the news platform, it will be in spite of its misguided policies on political content, not because of them, and because Threads has finally given users the tools, through ThreadsDeck, to build the apps they want.