A user can share a Thread post containing text, pictures, videos, links or their location. They can like, share or reply to other people’s threads, follow or tag other users and share a poll (a multiple-choice question).
The Threads ‘For you’ feed is a page that is personal to each user and shows popular content, threads from people the user follows or threads related to content the person has liked, shared or replied to in the past. A user can also ‘Create new feed’ to only see content on specific topics (e.g. football) or from particular accounts. Threads does not show adverts. There is no direct messaging feature so users message each other through Instagram.
Under 18 accounts have some stronger safety settings by default, including seeing less sensitive content (e.g. violence). They are automatically set to private, so that only their followers can see their threads or people they are replying to (although other people can still see a private account’s profile photo, name, username and description). Under 16s cannot make their account public unless their parent approves.
Parental supervision for under 18s on Threads is managed through the Instagram Family Centre. Parents can view time spent on Instagram and Threads and set a daily time limit and ‘sleep mode’ (when notifications are muted). Parents can also view who their child is following or being followed by, and view who they have blocked.
Privacy settings include the ability to prevent other people from seeing when you are online or mentioning your account name. Other settings, such as hiding ‘like’ and ‘share’ counts or preventing content containing certain words, are managed via Instagram settings.
