Threads acknowledges "mistakes" in content moderation, makes changes towards improvement

It seems Threads was having some trouble with content moderation on its platform. Meta will now be fixing "mistakes" in how Threads was enforcing its rules after several days of complaints about the way the social media platform was doing moderation.

In a new post on Threads, Threads head Adam Mosseri said that the company has already started addressing some of the issues that have popped up.

The complaints that the post addresses were related to Threads seemingly making aggressive, and even sometimes strange, content moderation choices. For example, a number of users reported getting their accounts penalized for using the word "cracker" or "saltines".

Mosseri doesn't explain exactly why these types of mistakes have happened on the platform, but indicated that one of the company's tools "broke". This issue seems to have prevented human reviewers from seeing enough context from the posts that they were moderating.

Mosseri says that changes have already been made to address the mistakes. He underlines that the mistakes were related to moderators making calls without context, and without being able to see how conversations played out, which was causing problems. Mosseri also says that social media platforms need to do better to provide a safer experience.

Threads users have been having complaints about the platform recently. Earlier, Mosseri promised to address an issue called "engagement bait" - posts that are designed to get you engaged with comments and likes and could be spammy, annoying, or even polarizing and controversial.

Of course, you'd complain if those seem to appear too frequently in your "For You" feed. Mosseri acknowledged that the company is working on bringing the issue "under control" after many users complained.

I find it great that Adam Mosseri is acknowledging issues on Threads and is promising users the company is working on fixing them. Sometimes, when it comes to things like that, it seems to me that social media platforms turn a blind eye to users who complain.

Acknowledging that there is an issue and promising a fix is something I'm not particularly used to seeing from social media executives, so it seems like a very big step in the right direction, in my opinion.