Threads, Meta’s new app like Twitter, may not want political talk. But the trends say otherwise.
Threads started testing a feature to show popular search terms for a small group of U.S. users last month. Now more people on phones and computers can see trends. Instagram says the test is still happening though.
With more using trends, the most discussed topics are about politics. On the day of this writing, 3 of the top 5 trends were related to President Biden’s State of the Union speech. People reacted to what he said about abortion, guns, taxes and other topics. They also discussed the response from Republicans.
Meta does not want politics on its platforms like Facebook and Instagram. They made changes to focus on family and friends instead of news. Instagram even said it will stop actively suggesting political stuff on Instagram and Threads. Many users were upset since they used Threads for talk like on Twitter.
But there is one place where Threads is allowing political discussion – its trends. The trends show what Threads users are searching about the most in real-time. Of course, it remains to be seen how long political topics stay there before they are replaced by other things.
We will keep watching if Threads keeps allowing political chat in its search trends feature, or if it follows Instagram’s lead to limit political talk. Only time will tell what happens as users in the U.S. continue testing this new feature.
