Social media algorithms can help you find interesting topics like football results and trending movies. But it’s common for unwatched TV series to show up in your timeline because the algorithm sees patterns in your previous topics. This was particularly frustrating for me last week after the Royal Rumble results were revealed before I could watch them.
Today, Threads is launching a new Dear Algo feature that prevents that from happening again. It’s powered by Meta’s artificial intelligence (AI), and when Dear Algo is used, you can ask it to temporarily change its timeline algorithm. News reports say Dear Algo won’t show you Superbowl results that you might find irrelevant, won’t show you any content about the latest season of a TV series, or filter out any boring political discussions.
Threads says Dear Algo will take over timeline content recommendations for 3 days. Up to 5 Dear Algo commands can be given to Threads at a time. They can be deleted if you feel 3 days is too long. You can also share or use other users’ Dear Algo commands to get the same timeline.
Dear Algo is currently enabled for Threads users in the United States, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom with plans to roll it out to everyone in the near future.
