Threads Adds New Online Indicator For Some Reason

Meta’s Threads app has received a new feature this week that’s quite a throwback to old-school messaging apps. The app now will now show an online indicator on the profile of Thread users who are currently online.

“When you’re active here, people will now see a green dot alongside your profile picture. If you have a private profile, only your followers will see your activity status,” the Threads team explained.

This new feature received a polarized reception. While it can be turned off by going to Settings > Privacy > Online status, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for Threads to show when its users are online unless it finally introduces its own private messages system.

Threads currently requires an Instagram account, and Instagram already has a private messages system. Threads added the ability to send an Instagram DM from Threads without switching apps, but head of Instagram Mosseri explained back in November that he wasn’t sure if Threads relying on Instagram for DMs was the best solution.

“If, in the end, we can’t make the Instagram inbox work for Threads, we’ll have a hard choice to make between (1) mirroring the Instagram inbox in Threads and dealing with notification routing weirdness, and (2) building a totally separate Threads inbox and dealing with the fact that you’ll have two redundant message threads with each of your friends with the same handles in two different apps. Neither seems great,” Mosseri said at the time.

While Meta may not have fully figured out what it want Threads to be yet, the company has been recently dealing with moderation issues, with many users complaining about their content being downranked or their accounts being suspended by mistake. Mosseri acknowledged errors from some human moderators and promised that the team was “fixing this so they can make the better calls and we can make fewer mistakes.