Goodbye, mates? Threads launches quote controls for all users
Threads users can now exert more control over who can cite their posts.
This builds on a feature that already allows Threads users to limit who can reply to your posts (competing services like X and Bluesky offer similar response checks). Threads described his plans for quotation control last month, and last night Adam Mosseri, who runs Threads and Instagram for parent company Meta, announced that the feature is available to all users.
“I hope this helps Threads continue to be a more positive place and gives people more control over their experience,” Mosseri wrote.
As of Saturday morning, the ability to limit quotes does not appear when I log into Threads on my desktop web browser, but is available in the Threads mobile app. The quote and reply controls appear to be grouped into a single drop-down menu, where users can open the conversation to “Anyone” or limit it to “Profiles you follow” or “Mentioned only.” These controls should make it harder to “dunk” others, when users quote someone else’s post to make themselves look stupid.
Image credit: Threads
“But wetting is good!” you say. “YO need to be able to tell my followers when someone on X/Threads/Bluesky/Mastodon has posted something silly, offensive or stupid.”
It’s fair: when I’m not the one being destroyed, I enjoy a good dunk as much as anyone. Fortunately, there’s still the ability to screenshot and share someone’s post while explaining why it’s silly/offensive/otherwise objectionable. This simply makes it less likely that a succession of dunks will cause the original post to go viral.
And it means that, in theory, the original poster can scroll around, blissfully unaware that someone on the internet might be saying bad things about it.
