Threads under fire for blocking searches about COVID-19, vaccines

The newly launched social media platform Threads is facing widespread criticism forblocking terms related to COVID-19 and vaccines on the platform.

Developed by Facebook's parent company Meta, the platform's decision to block coronavirus-relatedsearches on its service comes at a time when COVID-19 hospitalisation numbers are on the risein the United States, as per the data shared by theCentersfor Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“The search functionality temporarily doesn’t provide results for keywords that may show potentially sensitive content," a Meta spokesperson was quoted as saying by CNN.

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"People will be able to search for keywords such as ‘COVID’ in future updates once we are confident in the quality of the results.”

Currently, users are getting a black screen and a pop-up linking to the CDC website when they type terms related to "Covid" or "long Covid" on the revamped search engine that was rolled out last week.

Apart from“coronavirus,” “vaccines” and “vaccination”, words such as“sex,” “nude,” “gore,” “porn" are also blocked on the social media platform's search engine, according to The Washington Post.

The Mark Zuckerberg-owned company has been enveloped in controversysince the beginning of the pandemic for gatekeeping data related to the origins of the virus, as well as allowing COVID-19-related misinformation to spread on the platform.

Moreover, the decision to temporarily block search results related to Covid came on the same day as when theFood and Drug Administration (FDA)approved COVID-19 vaccines with formulations that more closely target currently circulating variants, as infections are once more on the rise.

A panel convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet tomorrow (September 12) to offer clinical recommendations about who should receive the updated vaccines.

Watch |Threads vs X: The rivalry intensifies as Threads gets a web version | WION

Threads becomes a dud

Threads, dubbed a "Twitter/Xkiller" by a significant portion of the internet community, had an impressive opening but since then, the platform has seen its popularity take a massivedip. As per data, both active users and time spent on the app - two major metrics to gauge a platform's popularity, were down significantly.

According to Similarweb data, over 100 million users had signed up for the app within a week of its release on July 5. The app reached a peak of 49 million users who engaged with the platform on a daily basis. However, by August 7, the metric had fallen to 10.3million active users.

Even Zuckerberg admitted there has been a drop in numbers as Meta seeks to compete against X.

"Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We're not there yet," he told employees during an internal company town hall.

(With inputs from agencies)

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