Meta rolls out “activity status” to Threads that shows a green dot next to a user's profile picture to show the user is online, if they have the feature enabled
RE: https://www.threads.net/... Chris Messina / @chris : What's up AIM buddies? — RE: https://www.threads.net/... X: @gateklons : And the GDPR legal basis for this disclosure is? Mark Gurman / @markgurman : In the long-run, these Apple Intelligence delays will eventually be forgotten. But let's not pretend this is all going as planned here.
The VergeJay Peters
Context & Ripple Effects
Threads has been steadily filling out its product surface, from its web app rollout to a beta that let users cross-post to and view engagement from federated tools. An opt-in presence indicator adds a more synchronous social cue to that broader product build-out.
The feature also sits alongside Meta’s effort to make Threads more legible as a governed platform, later illustrated by Account Status for moderation actions. Here, the immediate design question is whether users see the utility of availability signals as outweighing the privacy trade-off.
First-order effects
Threads users who enable the setting can signal that they are currently online through a green dot, while users who leave it off retain no such visible presence signal.
Meta adds a lightweight real-time interaction cue to Threads without making visibility mandatory; the GDPR concern raised in the discussion puts the opt-in design under closer scrutiny.
Second-order effects
A visible online population can encourage more immediate replies and direct interaction, but it can also make users more selective about enabling status if it creates expectations of responsiveness.
As Threads connects with federated tools through its fediverse integration beta, presence conventions may become another point where Meta’s product choices and interoperable social experiences diverge.
Third-order effects
If opt-in presence features gain adoption, Threads may shift from a primarily asynchronous public feed toward a more hybrid social product that competes for live conversation as well as posting.
Privacy controls around ambient social signals could become a recurring differentiator: sustained user or regulatory resistance would constrain how broadly platforms can make availability visible.
The trend: Social platforms are layering real-time presence and interaction signals onto public-feed products while making privacy controls central to adoption.
We're rolling out activity status as a way to help you find others to engage with in real-time. Only people who have activity status turned on will be able to see when you're online, and you can turn this off within your settings at any time. We hope that knowing when your peop…
We prototyped this feature at Twitter, which made sense because that was an actual realtime social network. What's the point of having a status indicator when you post things here and they only get fanned out 24-48 hours later?
Nobody asked for this. It's useless anyways because activity status would only be helpful for DM's, which we don't have. This is dumb. Absolutely baffling product decisions here.
Whoa. Publicly displaying online status is a HUGE change to @threads, @mosseri. Is there any way to shift the default to opt-in to showing if we are online or to opt-out? Out of curiosity, did you & @zuck consider hosting a data dialogue that proposed making this change & hear…
Fun fact: The new active status indicators, much like moderation, are handled by humans that are watching over your shoulder to see when you open the Threads app
This isn't the 1990s where people are sat at a desktop PC. Most people have their phones on them all the time and will get notifications straight away?
Some people seem to be under the impression that Meta wasn't tracking your online status before developing this new “I'm online” feature. Come on guys.