Everybody hates spoilers. Whether we’re talking about TV shows or sports, the simple fact is that people like to be surprised. The problem, though, is that if you spend any amount of time online, it’s easy to stumble across a spoiler you were desperately trying to avoid. It’s something that’s happened to me too many times to count. Sometimes I’ll hop on Twitter to see what’s going on in the news and accidentally see a post about how a White Lotus episode ends. Other times, I’ve inadvertently seen social media posts about a crazy ending to a football game I was 10 minutes behind on.
It’s certainly not the end of the world, but it is a frustration. And to that end, Threads today started rolling out a new feature that makes it easy for users to hide spoilers in their posts. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg briefly mentioned it on Threads early on Monday, and since then, a few more details have emerged.
How the feature works
Following up on Zuckerberg’s announcement, Instagram head Adam Mosseri explained how the feature works.
“We’re testing a way for you to hide spoilers in Threads posts,” Mosseri said. “When creating a post, highlight text or images and tap “mark spoiler” to blur it. People can reveal the hidden text or image by tapping it in their feed. Threads is the only app of its kind to have this type of content label, so I’m excited to see people use it to share perspectives about what they’re into.”
The feature went live for some users this afternoon, as evidenced by this post from the Meta Newsroom Threads account. The implementation is rather straightforward and will likely help keep people actively scrolling through Threads even when there are spoilers potentially lurking around the corner.
Indeed, in a press release, Meta made a point of highlighting how Threads is increasingly becoming a discussion hub for popular TV shows:
“Popular shows like ‘The Last of Us’ and ‘The White Lotus’ regularly trended on Threads during their seasons, a clear sign of the app’s growing community of entertainment and pop culture enthusiasts,” the press release reads in part.
All in all, Threads’ new spoiler-free feature is a nice addition to the app. And if you’re regularly on social media, it’s not too different from a similar spoiler feature on Reddit.
