Threads is notorious for engagement bait, and Meta knows it. And they're going to try to fix it, too — allegedly. This revelation came as many updates on Threads do: through a conversation on the app itself. Two days ago, a Threads user posted a fake image of an old lady wearing a miniskirt on the subway.

Engagement bait on Threads typically covers posts with banal questions or invites for open-ended discussions to encourage other users to interact. Because Threads, like Instagram, pushes users to see an algorithmic feed of posts by default, getting more interactions can snowball a simple post into virality.

Former X/Twitter users are finding their way to Threads. Unfortunately, that includes the oh-so-annoying engagement farmers.

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri is reassuring Threads users that the company is aware of the app’s engagement bait problems. If you’re an avid user of the app, we’re sure you must have seen plenty of clickbait content popping up,

In July, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg said Threads had reached 175 million monthly active users. It is a much larger platform than fellow X rival Bluesky, in large part thanks to its active promotion on other Meta platforms, most notably Instagram.

Engagement bait can take many forms but the core of the practice is to make a brash statement that draws a flurry of response from users. Whether that engagement is positive or negative is of no consequence because the goal is to get the algorithm to view the post as having high-engagement and have it serve the post to more people.