Instagram head: a Threads feed for just people you follow is ‘On the list’

Instagram head Adam Mosseri has responded to calls for a Threads home feed that only contains posts from accounts you follow, saying it’s “on the list” of features the platform would like to add. Mosseri sent the message in response to a post from YouTuber Marques Brownlee requesting the feature, as well as to photographer Noah Kalina. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also chimed in, posting a thumbs up emoji in response to Brownlee’s request.

If your early experience with Meta’s Twitter competitor is anything like mine, your home feed is likely filled with posts from random accounts recommended to you by the service’s algorithm alongside content from accounts you’ve actually decided to follow. In my case, these recommended posts far outnumber the content I’ve actually chosen to see, but it’s difficult to know how much of this is because Threads only launched a few short hours ago and is still onboarding new users in their millions.

Although both Adam Mosseri and Mark Zuckerberg have actively responded to the requests, their posts are far from a firm commitment to add the feature. But given the main Instagram app already offers a similar choice of feeds that includes a dedicated “Following” list, it seems possible that Threads will adopt a similar approach. In Instagram’s case, however, the feed containing recommendations is still the default.

Meta has been much more outspoken about its future plans to integrate Threads with ActivityPub, the decentralized social media protocol that provides the basis of rival microblogging service Mastodon. Eventually, the hope is that Threads users will be able to interact with those on other ActivityPub-based services. Support for the protocol could even allow a Threads user to take their audience with them if they ever leave the service, Adam Mosseri told my colleague Alex Heath in a recent interview.