Farewell, dunks? Threads launches quote controls for all users

Threads users can now exert more control over who can quote their posts.

This builds on a feature that already allows Threads users to limit who can reply to their posts (competing services like X and Bluesky offer similar reply controls). Threads outlined its plans for quote controls last month, and last night Adam Mosseri — who leads both Threads and Instagram for parent company Meta — announced that the feature is available to all users.

“I hope this will help keep Threads a more positive place and give people more control over their experience,” Mosseri wrote.

As of Saturday morning, the ability to limit quotes isn’t showing up when I log into Threads on my desktop web browser, but it is available in the Threads mobile app. Quote and reply controls appear to be bundled together in a single dropdown menu, where users can open the conversation to “Anyone,” or limit it to “Profiles you follow” or “Mentioned only.” These controls should make it harder to “dunk” on others, where users quote someone else’s post in order to make them look dumb.

Image credit: Threads

“But dunking is good!” you say. “I need to be able to tell my followers when someone on X/Threads/Bluesky/Mastodon has posted something dumb, offensive, or stupid.”

Fair enough: When I’m not the one being destroyed, I enjoy a good dunk as much as anyone. Luckily, the ability to screenshot and share someone’s post while explaining why it’s dumb/offensive/otherwise objectionable still exists. This just makes it less likely that a succession of dunks will make the original post go viral.

And it means that in theory, the original poster can scroll on, blissfully unaware that someone on the internet might be saying mean things about them.