Meta has confirmed that it’s putting Threads posts into users’ Facebook feeds to help promote its new social network. The company confirmed the move on Threads when a user asked why Threads keep cropping up on their Facebook feed, they complained that they don’t want their Threads showing up in other people’s Facebook feeds.
In response to this, the official Threads account said that the step was taken so that people can see the latest content from Threads directly on Facebook and Instagram. In response to the user’s concerns, the company said that “we’re listening to feedback like yours as we continue to build on this.”
Many users complained in response to Meta about this change explaining that the people they have on Facebook are completely different to those they have on Facebook and for Threads to show up in Facebook could be a dealbreaker for them.
According to Engadget, Facebook has been tying in content from its other platforms for years. It gave the example of Instagram Reels being inserted into Facebook feeds and allowing businesses on WhatsApp to buy ads that appear in Facebook feeds.
The other integrations are apparently optional but the Threads appearing in Facebook are not. To strike a balance, and given Meta’s comments about listening to users, there’s a good chance that it will give people the ability to opt-out of the feature, but given Threads’ difficulty to remain relevant, the company probably won’t remove the integration altogether.
As a bit of background, Threads was launched a few months ago by Meta to try and grab some of X’s disgruntled users. It initially gained a lot of attraction with Meta getting a lot of celebrities on the platform before it launched.
Since then, the traffic has fallen quite a lot and Meta still faces competition from the likes of Mastodon and Bluesky. If Threads ever does become a popular platform, it seems like it will have to do so like other platforms; with slow natural growth over time.