Threads: Meta massively censors sensitive topics

The social network Threads has extremely restrictive moderation, with many subjects simply inaccessible.

The social network launched a few months ago by Meta to compete with Twitter and which, after a great start, has sunk slightly into oblivion, wishes to offer an extremely polished user experience. For this, many subjects were simply banned.

Exit COVID and sex

Social networks have been in the news a lot in recent years, with large platforms being considered by public authorities as potentially dangerous. They would thus be vectors of disinformation, hatred, foreign political operations, or even overly explicit content. Suffice to say that their moderation has become an important issue, as shown by the implementation of the European Digital Services Act.

So, to avoid this kind of criticism, which has already been made in the past to Facebook and Instagram, Meta has chosen the option of heavy moderation for Threads. Searching for a number of topics “ potentially sensitive » was thus quite simply made impossible. Among these, we find in particular the words “covid”, “covid-19”, “vaccine”, or even “sex”, “nude” or “gore”.

A brake on discussions?

This very heavy approach is fully assumed by the team in charge of this network. “ The search functionality temporarily does not provide results for keywords that may contain potentially sensitive content “, explained Instagram manager Adam Mosseri. He explains this decision by the desire for caution in the deployment of the social network.

The fact remains that if the “temporarily” began to last, Threads would resemble in this aspect more the Chinese WeChat, where many keywords are regularly censored, than X.com (ex-Twitter), the rival it desires. exceed. Especially if some of these keywords can actually refer to content deemed undesirable by the platform, they represent legitimate topics for discussion. We will then have to hope that this is only a transitional phase, for a network already in difficulty and which could well not arrive here until 2024.

Source : Engadget