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What Meta should change about Threads, one year in

Threads has grown to 175 million users, but it's still not really clear what it's actually for.

In the last year, I’ve seen countless multi-part Threads posts from complete strangers detailing childhood abuse, eating disorders, chronic illnesses, domestic violence, pet loss and other unimaginable horrors. These types of posts have led to blogger Max Read dubbing Threads the “ gas leak social network ” because they make it feel as if everyone is “suffering some kind of minor brain damage.” But if Meta wants Threads to be a “public square,” it can’t preemptively block searches for topics like COVID-19 and vaccines just because they are “potentially sensitive.” (Instagram head Adam Mosseri claimed this measure was “temporary” last October.)

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