Threads gives us a useful search function… and takes it away from us in the same day

The joy has been short-lived, dear friends. Yesterday, Monday, various users of Threads, the new social network from Meta, were able to see and test a new option that allowed them to sort search results chronologically. However, the Threads team has reversed the feature because it was implemented by mistake.

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While Threads is becoming more and more popular among users worldwide (including Europe, where it has recently become available), people are very critical of some of the current tools of the social network. One of them is the search feature, which, like in other social networks, allows us to explore the thousands of posts on Threads. But, where is the problem exactly? The problem is that the results are listed only by relevance (algorithmically, that is).

For now, Threads does not allow sorting search results by chronological order (from oldest to newest, or vice versa), but for a few hours, many users were able to test this option thanks to a development team error in Threads.

“Earlier today, an internal prototype was accidentally made available to a small number of people – this is not something we are currently testing externally,” the Threads team told TechCrunch.

While the news is a cold shower, it shouldn’t catch us by surprise at this point. Last month, when asked about the possibility of filtering search results by date, Instagram’s director, Adam Mosseri, completely ruled out the option, stating that “it would create a significant security loophole”.

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“To clarify, having a comprehensive list of *every* post with a specific word in chronological order inevitably means that spammers and other bad actors will clutter the view with content simply by adding relevant words or tags,” Mosseri said in a thread on Threads. “And before you ask why we don’t remove that bad content, understand that there is much more unwanted content than we can or should remove.”