Does Threads hate single moms?

When your algorithm is working against you

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.

#NotSponsored. —Kate

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Amy Fraser is a single mom with two kids and works as the community director at Diem, a social search engine where I am also an editor. Last week, at an offsite for the company, we were talking with some other coworkers about Threads. She doesn’t use the app, but Instagram will highlight certain posts in her feed. While I always get shown Threads about tech news and the creator economy, Amy gets something different: men complaining about women. Specifically, as she describes it, “why single mothers are the cause of the world’s demise and why no one should ever go near one or they will catch some sort of horrid disease.”

Threads is a mecca of Millennial brain rot

None of us had ever seen this kind of content until Amy showed us her feed, which included men discounting the experiences of women who have spoken out about exes, men debating what qualities in women are and aren’t acceptable, and more content you would normally find deep in a Reddit thread, not at the top of the feed of a mother from New Zealand.

Amy is active on Instagram. The app knows her basic demographic information, both what she’s disclosed and the content she engages with—which she insists is never these kinds of posts. “The fact that this platform knows that I’m a single mother and, instead of presenting me with useful resources, douses me in fury-inducing content that perpetuates shame, is so sickening to me,” she says.