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

Sometimes served with the recommended algorithm since the first days of apps, it is a joke for a long time on strange articles. Recently, some users start to see another type of a strange writing that appears in their offers: “Friends” articles of random people.

The articles often reflect the features of the selfies of young people who claim to be 18 years of age. Engadget has observed numerous such articles in the “Related Topics” recommended by the users who entered the lines. It is not known whether these articles appear to be “relevant” to other popular recommended articles.

For example, About the Spotify from popular topics, the user Chris Messina was offered in the home studio of those users. By clicking on the article, the man made a post of “Related” from the topics from the Mosser. At the same time, there was another “Related” post from an account that was a 18-year-old girl in the 11th grade.

For any reason, the topics seem to make the above posts to the “Related Topics”. For example, the following article also recommended as an “related” article elsewhere in the application. This user’s profile shows that they placed the same thing – a picture following a WhatsApp link – more than 30 times in the last five days.

Here, Recently, Engadget’s editor-in-chief Aaron Souppouris, recently recommended when he entered the underpass under the posts entitled “Related” Yarn “.

It is not surprising that the topics grow up to more than 350 million users. Meta Exec Mosseri said the company saw an increase in In July 2023, in the “spam attacks”, after a lot of time. The company last year said he was trying to get it engagement bait under control.

However, it is not unexpected to be spam on a platform, but it is strange that the application recommends these articles so often. Meta confirmed that there are specific questions or specifications such as “Related” content, but spammy messages should not be shown as the recommended content.

It should be noted that spammy messages seem to be seen as recommendations in other parts of the meter. Recently, a Reddit user saw a strange post that seems to recommend in Instagram. This article “I need a bf 🎀 age” demonstrated a woman’s selfie. A quick look at the user’s profile indicates that they have placed dozens of times with the same title within the last week. “Each time the proposed ropes window shows, I have to go through 2-4 posts before you see something normal,” said reddor . “I’m not interested in ‘and I know each I see, but they will still be shown.”

The writing seems to be associated with a sort of spam campaign. The exact same selfie and text mentioned by Reddor and the text was shared with at least one topic account. And many other accounts in the subjects are almost constantly saying “do not differ” or “don’t do age”.

Did you see such articles in your recommendations on topics? Connect in Karissa.Bell [at] Alarm in Engadget.com or Karissabe.51.