Threads will not get chronological search feature, says Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, cites bad actors

Threads took the world by storm when it launched on July 6 and it soon became the fastest platform ever to reach 100 million users, a feat that it took just 5 days to achieve. However, it has not been all smooth sailing for the platform. Moving past the initial days, Threads saw a drop in user engagement and traffic while facing competition from Elon Musk’s X. To get the traction back, Meta has been introducing a lot of new features on Threads lately, including keyword search. However, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri recently revealed that Threads won’t get one feature that X already has - chronological search. Here’s why.

Why Threads won’t get chronological search?

Just a few days ago, Mosseri took to Threads to announce the global rollout of keyword search on the platform. Below the post, a user asked the Instagram boss if the chronological search was also in the works. “Any plans to allow ordering search results chronologically (as in showing most recent threads first)?”, the user asked Mosseri, to which he replied that it wouldn’t be allowed on the platform as it would “create a substantial safety loophole.”

A few days later, Mosseri further clarified that allowing chronological search on Threads would open up the platform to spammers and “other bad actors”. In a subsequent post, Mosseri explained, “To clarify, having a comprehensive list of *every* post with a specific word in chronological order inevitably means spammers and other bad actors pummel the view with content by simply adding the relevant words or tags. And before you ask why we don't take down that bad content, understand there's a lot more content that people don't want to see than we can or should take down.”

The Instagram boss revealed that search products need some ranking to avoid getting overrun by spammers and bad actors. “You can show results in chronological order, but you then need to omit bad content that does not quote cross the line and qualify to get taken down”, Mosseri further explained.

Thus, in essence, you shouldn’t expect chronological search to arrive anytime soon. However, Mosseri also suggested that they aren’t done working to improve search and they need time to work out how to make it work for real-time events. In the meantime, you can already take advantage of the keyword search feature on Threads, with more improvements expected soon.