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Why is Threads recommending these weird spammy posts from people looking for 'friends'?

Some Threads users are starting to notice another type of strange post appear in their suggestions: posts from random people looking for "friends."

Threads users have long joked about the sometimes bizarre posts served up by its recommendation algorithm since the early days of the app. And here's what Engadget's editor-in-chief Aaron Souppouris was recently recommended as a "related" thread" underneath one of my own posts while logged out. But while the mere presence of spam on a platform the size of Threads isn’t unexpected, it's bizarre that the app is recommending these posts so frequently.

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