The vast majority of my Threads feed is completely random people I don't follow

A piece of advice : don't use that shit!

Well since I don't want to delete my Instagram account and apparently I can't only delete Threads, my new account will just stay there forever
- Or, you could continue your brave forward-looking journey and try one of the Fediverse Solutions for Insta (namely Pixelfed) and leave Marks torture cellar behind.
- Permanently Deleted
- I have Instagram but haven't downloaded or activated threads. Can't you just uninstall?

I mean, what did you expect when you downloaded threads?

I’m kinda at a loss for words.

This isn’t even trying to be different from Twitter from what I see here.

It is different, it only has the algorithmic feed instead of the optional "only people you follow in algorithmic order" from Twitter. (And RIP the old no algorithm, only chronological order from tweetdeck in 30 days)

They're both trash, I hate algorithmic feeds
A thread was embedded in a news article earlier and I didn't even know it was threads. Had the blue tick and all.

Have you heard of our lord and savior, Mastodon?

Mastodon has been a better alternative to reddit for me than Lemmy has so far tbh, except it's not as interactive with other people I less you chase followers. But the niche communities have more activity over there than here so far.
Don't get me started on just how much of a clone Mastodon is, it's like they really wanted to be behind on features. Meanwhile there's other worthy platforms like Akkoma and Misskey that add some really nice features.
- There is Calckey too !
- Pleroma has basically no disadvantages except the dev not exactly being the best person (but are the Lemmy devs?)

Welcome... to the algorithm.

I'll never understand this style of social media. Facebook I hate, but kind of get, hearing from people you know. Reddit, was just a big message board. But twitter and its copy cats have zero appeal to me. Following people is just a creepy concept for me.

It used to be really useful for following news and companies. I work in DevOps, and I used to follow AWS, Microsoft, Google, Cloudflare, etc. then I added some Sony/Playstation follows for games and such and it was super handy to see product announcements, downtime status updates for cloud computing platforms, etc.

Then my feed got filled with “you might like” instead of what I was trying to follow, so I switched to a command line “only pull my follows” script and now with the API stuff that’s just useless so I gave up.

Following random celebs and people you don’t know, on the other hand), always seemed creepy.
- Even that I'd rather sub to a subreddit or something. And the comments below a post are so terrible, since they are algorithm driven instead of votes.
Facebook is not even that anymore. It’s just a stream of algorithmically suggested posts right now.
Twitter started out just following people you know, then famous people got into the mix, then you got to cuss out the POTUS, then Elon bought it and it tanked.

Zuck seems to think that Twitter is just a Facebook feed of famous people when no, your friends were there too.

They could use some beans

It’s so bad over there. Might be the worst case of quantity over quality. It’s just stuffed full of brands trying to make themselves relevant and influencers posting engagement bait. I’m not even exaggerating, 100% of my feed is that.

There’s nothing of worth there other than sheer volume.

this kind of platform is only useful for following people/sportsteams/gov organizations/etc for updates or news

no idea why anyone would bother using it as a discussion platform, its fuckin garbage at that
And why would anyone be the least bit surprised? Copy paste facebook and all of its very genuine issues. It's not a social platform, it's an advertising platform.
- I'm not surprised in the slightest, but I've seen lots of posts saying how diverse it is over there, and how vibrant, and that it's more like old Twitter.
  
  And yeah, it's brands posting stale memes and old Twitter personalities fighting for their lives, so I guess it is like old Twitter.

Why use anything from Meta? Seems like a bad time if you ask me.

I feel like that’s how Twitter is, at least that’s what I remember from years ago when I tried it, didn’t recognize anyone there and just walked away. I don’t mind seeing strangers sometimes when I’m bored with my normal feed and want to see something new, but it seemed to be the default behavior for me and I didn’t care to learn how to fix it.

I know two of them

The saying used to be Facebook is full of friends who should be strangers and twitter is full of strangers that should be friends but they not fucking suck now

By design 🤗 it probably results in more of your attention being wasted or they wouldn’t have made it like that

That’s how Twitter was and is today too. It’s not supposed to only be people you follow.