Last week, Meta finally rolled out search tags to all users on Threads, its microblogging arm of Instagram, and users are taking advantage of a design quirk to have a little fun. Thread “topic tags” are a lot like hashtags, but they are not exactly the same. For one thing, there is no hash (#). They can also contain spaces, meaning that tags can be read as normal phrases rather than a bunch of words thrown together, as has long been the norm on Twitter/X and the like. However, just like normal hashtags, they will be highlighted in blue and linked to other posts containing that tag.
It's pretty basic stuff… which makes the new prank's effectiveness seem even more absurd. It goes like this: Someone creates a post on Threads, ideally with a lot of text, then puts a “Show More” tag at the end, seemingly in the middle of a word or sentence. You, the unwitting victim, will click “Show More” expecting to see the rest of the post, but surprise! – instead, it will direct you to the page that label. You might as well have been Rick Rolled.
I admit it, I have got. Some users, bless them, have even commented that they fell in love several times, thinking it was a mistake. The first instance goes back to the Threads user. @freezydoritowho according to his own biography and professional pages actually works for Meta.
As simple as it is, the trick works very well because it perfectly duplicates a UI element that we are already used to seeing. Should this be a dead giveaway that the text is a blue link? Not really, because that's exactly how it always looked on X. Even on Facebook, the option to expand a post is presented as a gray “See more” link. It's been a while since I last fell for something this dumb online, because I generally don't trust anything, and it momentarily took me back to a much dumber time on the internet.
On Threads, my For You feed is already a damn space full of bad recommendations, and since interacting with the “Show more” tag, I've seen at least three dozen of these posts. I'd say this joke isn't likely to survive beyond a week (I got fooled twice, etc.), but my timeline is still littered with new users posting things like “What is Threads?” every two days that they are ready to be harvested. Threads also just launched today in Europe, which means a lot more unsuspecting users will be joining. Let's see how long it takes Meta to implement a tweak for this one.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/threads-new-hashless-tags-have-opened-the-door-for-the-silliest-form-of-trolling-152303227.html?src =rss