Meta is “listening to feedback” after some users noticed the company is cross-posting Threads posts to users' Facebook feeds without offering an opt-out option
The company said it's “listening to feedback” about the feature. — Meta is starting to ramp up its growth-hacking tactics …
EngadgetKarissa Bell
Context & Ripple Effects
Meta is using Facebook’s feed as a distribution channel for Threads content, extending its earlier effort to make Feed ranking more adjustable through user controls over what appears in Facebook feeds. The immediate dispute is not cross-posting itself, but the lack of a user choice to stop it.
Threads posts can reach Facebook audiences without the originating users being offered an opt-out, increasing exposure while reducing users’ control over where their posts surface.
Meta faces immediate feedback and trust pressure around feed relevance and consent; its stated response is to listen rather than commit to a product change.
Second-order effects
Greater Facebook distribution can help Threads seed conversations and engagement, but irrelevant or unexpected posts may also worsen Facebook feed satisfaction and encourage demands for stronger controls.
The feature raises the bar for Meta’s own cross-product integrations: later global cross-posting tools make clear labeling, destination controls, and audience expectations more important across its apps.
Third-order effects
If cross-app distribution becomes a standard growth mechanism, Meta’s products may operate less as separate networks and more as a shared content-and-discovery layer, with governance choices affecting multiple audiences at once.
The durable tension is between centralized recommendation and individual control: platforms can gain reach from integrated feeds, but sustained use depends on making audience expansion legible and configurable.
The trend: This is one early instance of Meta treating its social apps as an interconnected distribution network, while user-control expectations increasingly constrain how that integration is implemented.
We've launched an update to make it easier for people to see the latest content from Threads directly on Facebook and Instagram. But we're listening to feedback like yours as we continue to build on this.
Reading through various objections to this feature and wondering how people will react if Fediverse integration means your Threads content is reposted or shown on Mastodon? If I'm a Mastodon user, should Fediverse integration allow me to follow a Threads user and repost them to …
I am very torn on this. Because I'm super transparent on my threads and don't know if I want everyone to see it. But then it's starting to grow on me. Perhaps offer an option to choose if we want to cross share. Yeah. That would be smart and respectful of everyone's privacy …
Ngl, the whole “showing your threads on Facebook to encourage FB users to use Threads” thing is making me real queasy. I stopped using FB a few years ago because I wanted to separate online and offline relationships, to avoid increasingly complicated (and sometimes hostile) dyna…
This should be opt-in (*not* opt-out). My posts showing up in another app/website without any real control over how/when/if is not something I want. For some people this could be a privacy or safety risk in much the same way “People You May Know” sometimes caused issues over on…
The more people raise awareness about this, the more Meta gets incentived to improve on this. I also would like to have the option to break the linkage between my Instagram and Threads accounts.
They should make it so you can pin posts to your IG/FB for this purpose, so users can pick their ad rather than leaving us with the anxiety that at any time Meta could show our most Twitter selves to our friends & family.
Different graphs and old family / friends are a large part of it. Folks assemble follow graphs in a fundamentally different way than they assemble friendship graphs. And they create their content with those expectations in mind.
Everyone upset at this clearly not understanding what's going to happen when they open it up for federation. If your content is public, it can be shown anywhere.
Instagram is fine, as there was an implicit agreement signing up for Threads with an IG login that there would be overlap. Showing Threads on Facebook? Immediately no.
This makes sense for Meta to boost Threads visibility on its other platforms. But does it make sense for you? I'm not seeing anyone in favor of this yet. Am I wrong?
We're starting to see Facebook's famous growth-hacking playbook on Threads (doesn't seem as if there's a way to opt out of this kind of sharing at the moment, based on the somewhat vague wording here)
I know enough about how the sausage gets made to imagine how these FB / Insta Threads units are getting assembled, and it definitely gives me pause. I personally know two people who have ceased activity on Threads because of this. Need more transparency here. cc @0xjessel @camr…
yeah, this is that standard issue tone deaf stuff I had expected to show up at some point, it's a bit sad that it's this quick into the product lifecycle
Bumping this because there needs to be more transparency around how Threads units are being shared on IG and Facebook. Personally, I'm less concerned about IG because when I created this account from my Insta I understood there was some explicit connection. But Facebook is diff…
This is precisely the line of thinking that led to Facebook (and other social media companies) burning a lot of trust a decade ago under the premise of “well, it's public anyway... let's make it visible everywhere!” When it comes to human expectation, there is delta between expe…
nobody would expect something that's posted publicly on the internet to be accessible to literally anybody is this ‘illusion of “private” tweeting’ all over again? public posts on the internet are public. shocking, i know clearly you're choosing attention and public posting ove…