Meta Vows to Tackle Engagement Bait on Threads

Social media used to be about real people posting about their real lives. The level of engagement and the desire to go viral was the furthest thing from people\’s minds. Now, however, bots and engagement farmers are everywhere, and you\’ve probably fallen into some of their traps. Possibly even on Meta\’s threads, where the engagement trap seems to be growing.

Threads hates the engagement trap as much as you do

Whether you\’ve switched from X/Twitter to Threads, or use both simultaneously, you\’ve probably noticed a rise in engagement traps. Elon Musk\’s platform is full of them, which is one of the reasons I use X/Twitter less often these days. But unfortunately, Threads has also fallen into the engagement trap.

If you\’re not sure what engagement farming and engagement traps are, it\’s essentially any social media post that is designed solely to get a reaction. The poster wants people to comment, share, and emotionally engage. And it doesn\’t matter if the engagement is positive or negative. This Threads post has been cited as a clear example.

This increase in engagement greed was noticed and discussed on Threads. And one particular conversation prompted Instagram head Adam Mosseri to respond. In between defending Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for previous comments, he admitted that Threads has a problem with engagement greed, and promised that they are working on fixing it.

Acknowledging the problem is a good start, and it suggests that Threads developers are at least aware that engagement greed is on the rise. However, without any additional details, “working to get it under control” could mean anything. So we should expect that “in the near future” means that we, the users, will learn about what is happening behind the scenes at some point.

All we can do is not fall for the greed of engagement

There are two main issues for social media platforms that want to fix the problem of engagement greed (or at least claim to do so).

Which means we, the users, can’t really rely on threads to fix this problem. Instead, we should not let engagement farmers force us to engage with their content like sheep. Resist the urge to take the bait, and instead continue scrolling past the obvious hook. I actually go one step further and silence the poster responsible.