Meta Says Threads Reached 500 Million Monthly Users

Meta announced Tuesday that its Threads platform has hit 500 million monthly active users, a milestone reached just under three years after its launch as a text-based alternative to the platform now known as X. The company also rolled out new features aimed at giving users greater control over what appears in their feeds and expanding dedicated spaces for topic-based discussions.

The growth comes as Threads introduces Your Algo, a tool that allows people to privately adjust the content they see without posting public requests. Building on an earlier feature called Dear Algo, the new option lets users specify topics they want more or less of and set the duration for those preferences at one, three or seven days. The changes apply only to the individual user and are not visible to others. Your Algo is launching first in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

Meta is also moving its Communities feature out of beta testing. Communities provide spaces where users can focus on specific interests such as sports, television, music or books. A new Communities Hub will make these groups easier to discover, and each will now carry its own visual identity to help users recognize them quickly. The company has credited these topic-focused areas with driving much of the recent increase in engagement, noting that daily activity continues to rise globally.

The milestone underscores Threads' steady expansion at a time when many users have sought platforms offering clearer guardrails against misinformation and harassment. While X has faced repeated criticism for reduced content moderation and the spread of unverified claims under its current ownership, Threads has positioned its algorithm tweaks and community tools as ways to let people shape their own experience. By allowing temporary, private adjustments to feeds, the platform gives individuals a direct hand in filtering out unwanted material without relying solely on company-wide policies.

Usage has grown particularly in parts of Asia, with time spent on the app rising sharply in markets such as South Korea and Japan. Meta reports that more people are now opening Threads directly rather than arriving through its other services, suggesting the app is developing its own audience. The company has not released updated daily active user figures since last fall, when the number stood at 150 million, but it describes daily engagement as increasing strongly year over year.

The new personalization options arrive as regulators and advocacy groups continue to press major technology firms for greater transparency around algorithmic recommendations. Threads' approach of letting users issue short-term instructions about content preferences represents a modest step toward that goal. Whether these features will meaningfully reduce exposure to low-quality material remains to be seen, yet they mark a departure from platforms that offer little recourse when feeds fill with unwanted or misleading posts.

With Communities now fully available and further expansions under consideration, Threads appears focused on building sustained spaces for conversation rather than relying only on viral individual posts. The platform's growth to half a billion monthly users shows that a sizable audience is responding to these efforts, even as competition in the social media space remains intense.