Mute, Block, Hide, and Repeat

I like Threads. I joined the social-media tool the day after it launched and I've been able to re-connect with many people that I knew through Twitter but with whom I had lost touch after jumping that sinking ship.

My main social-media hangout continues to be Mastodon but the majority of my old acquaintances are on Threads.

And while I like to surf my timeline to see what those virtual friends are up to, I find that my Threads timeline is starting to get gummed up with posts from people that I don't know and with content that doesn't particularly interest me. Although, every once and a while, I see a post from a stranger who shares my interest, and I start following them.

But for the most part, and more frequently, I'm getting posts which amount to annoying spam.

The latest trend, on Threads, seems to be posts that simply say "Following you" or "Mentioned you," and are accompanied by a photo of a beautiful woman. Of course, the person is neither following me nor mentioned me in the post.

I admit that when I scroll through my timeline and see an image of a pretty woman, I'll slow down for a second or two before moving on. I'm hard-coded to look. I don't apologize. But I'm now wondering if the Threads algorithm monitors your scroll-through rate and places similar posts in your timeline.

After all, there are a lot of great photographers who post their work on Threads, and I stop for those posts, often liking the post or leaving a comment. I find that I see more photography posts in my timeline, and I'm happy if they keep those coming.

But I find the Following/Mentioned you posts an annoyance. So, I've started blocking those posts when they appear in my timeline. When I block them, the post doesn't go away, so I have to take the added measure of hiding the post.

I also mute people who post pictures of women with mundane messages, like, "What do you think of my outfit?" Again, there are so many of them and they detract from me being able to find the people I really want to follow.

The thing is, ever since I've started blocking, hiding, and muting, the number of these posts seems to have exploded. And I find that I spend more time culling the garbage posts than reading those that I want to see.

Does anybody else have this issue?

I'm hopeful that Threads comes up with a filter to cut these posts out, or, better yet, create a search and destroy tool that they use to keep these kind of posts from flooding the timeline.

I like Threads but this sort of thing is keeping me firmly grounded on Mastodon.