Instagram Threads, Meta’s competitor to Elon Musk’s X, is testing a way to make your replies to others’ posts less visible on the platform.
The company is adding a new privacy feature that allows you to customize your profile to remove the tab that displays your replies. This leaves only the two tabs that show posts and reposts.
The addition offers an option to make your profile and use of Threads more private, without having to switch to a fully private profile, which would limit the visibility of your posts to only your followers and those you choose to reply to.
While Threads’ main “For You” feed offers a mix of posts, including replies, they’re less likely to be surfaced by the algorithm, which already reduces their visibility. Offering a feature that turns off the ability for others to browse your replies on your profile would make them even more difficult for others to surface.
The feature was first spotted by Threads user and reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi, who said the option was rolling out to the iOS app. An Instagram spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the option to show or hide replies was something the company had recently started testing with a “small number of people,” and had not yet publicly launched.
To see if you have the feature, you can click the “Edit Profile” button on your Threads user profile and then scroll down to the option labeled “Show your Replies.” By default, this is enabled, but you can opt to toggle it off. The company notes that even if you disable showing your replies publicly, you can still view your replies from the Threads app Settings, where you can also view other types of content like your Saved items, Likes, Archive, and more.
This is not the only control around Replies that Threads has introduced. The company previously launched a way to limit who can reply to your posts, allowing you to choose between anyone, profiles you follow, or those you’ve mentioned only — similar to X.
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Hiding more personal interactions like replies could help boost engagement among Threads users. Similarly, X earlier this year chose to make everyone’s Likes private, so users would feel more comfortable engaging with content, which also helps to inform X’s recommendations.
