cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/128452
It seems that there are at least 30 Million people that want a different experience than me.
Forbes described the Threads service with the following summary:
The most significant difference between the two platforms is the timeline, as Meta’s app only displays an algorithmic timeline—in a similar vein to Facebook and Instagram—and offers no option for a Twitter-like reverse chronological time showing the most recent posts.
The algorithm-driven timeline also displays posts made by accounts that the user does not follow—something that Twitter only restricts to its alternate “For You” timeline.
Threads is a mobile-only experience at the moment and users can only make posts, write comments and follow people on the platform’s mobile app, unlike Twitter, which allows all of this on its website as well.
Meta’s official blog announcing the launch of Threads also makes no mention of a native desktop or web browser experience, which is currently limited to seeing people’s posts and their profile pages.
Hashtags—a key element of Twitter’s identity and a feature that has permeated other social platforms including Facebook and Instagram—are not present on Threads, as the platform does not allow users to search for specific content.
This means that there is no “trending section” on Threads and the only way to discover content on the platform is based on what Meta’s algorithm decides to serve.
i also absolutely feel this way, but i think more people like ~the algorithms~ than people like us suspect. you have no idea how many new people i’ve seen complain about this on mastodon. people show up, see a blank feed that they have to make an effort to populate, and turn around and leave. i think a lot of people enjoy frictionless spoonfed content a la the tiktok for you page these days…
I can accept having an algorithm flow as well, like instagram used to have when entereing the search tab.
It really bugs me when scrolling through my friends and such and their posts come in a different order each time and as soon as I’ve hit the end of unread posts I end up in algorithm land again.
Just let me have an option to only view the stuff I follow on the main tab/area.