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Threads adds new personalization and community features as it reaches 500M monthly users

Nearly three years after launching as a competitor to Twitter (now X), Threads has reaches 500 million monthly active users, the company announced Tuesday. The Meta-owned social platform also announced a series of new features launching today, including a “Your Algo” tool that lets users control what they see in their feed. The new Your Algo feature builds on the platform’s “Dear Algo” tool launched in February, which lets users tell Threads what they want to see more or less of in their feed by posting a public post such as, “Dear Algo, show me more posts about podcasts.” With the new Your Algo feature, users can privately control what they see in their feed without having to share a public post. You can tell Threads you want to see more or less of certain topics and choose how long the request lasts: one, three, or seven days. Only you can see the requests. Your Algo is rolling out today in the U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Image Credits:Threads By allowing users to temporarily influence what appears on their feeds, Threads gains an edge over X and other competitors by offering a feature that isn’t available on rival platforms. Threads is also bringing “Communities” out of beta and adding new requested features for it. Launched last year as a way to take on X, the feature give users dedicated spaces within the app where they can delve deeper into conversations on topics that matter to them like basketball, television, K-pop, books, and more. Now, users will be able to find communities through a new “Communities Hub.” Additionally, communities now have their own distinct icons to make it easier to spot and recognize them. “The Discovery Hub is a way for us to try to get communities in front of more people,” Instagram head Connor Hayes told TechCrunch. “We noticed that when folks use the app with a clear purpose and they find their people in the app quickly, it’s just a better experience for them. One of the challenges that they’ve had since we launched that feature over the last year was that it’s hard to organically find the communities that matter to you sometimes. So, the Discovery Hub is a big one.” Image Credits:Threads Threads also announced that it’s expanding Live Chats to more communities alongside the ability to co-host chats and quote moments to your feed. Launched in April, Live Chats allow for real-time conversations during cultural events like the Fifa World Cup. By July, all communities will be able to start Live Chats. “One of the positive pieces of feedback that we get from a lot of people about Threads is that they appreciate the quietness of the app in a world where a lot of social is video-centric and loud. And so these Live Chats have been a nice second screen companion experience for people that are watching stuff, but want to follow along with commentary while they do so,” Hayes said. The expansion of Live Chats will help Threads close the gap with X when it comes to real-time conversations. Unlike X, which has long served as a global “town square” of sorts for breaking news and live events, Threads lagged behind X in terms of relevance and timeliness when it first launched because it lacked many of the features that X had, such as robust search, hashtags, and a chronological feed. However, it has added these features over time, and is now looking to better compete with X through the addition of a feature that even the Elon Musk-owned app doesn’t have. In terms of the new MAU milestone, it shows that Threads was able to add 100 million monthly users in the past 10 months, as the company said in August 2025 that it had 400 million monthly active users. Threads’ growth comes as the platform has shipped numerous new features over the past year, such as DMs, ghost posts, desktop messaging, and more. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Pr

TechCrunchJun 16

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Plex adds new social features ahead of a major price hike for its lifetime pass

Plex has come a long way from being just a personal media server. Over the past few years, it has transformed into a streaming hub, today featuring ad-supported content and movie rental options. Now, the company is setting its sights on competing with social networking platforms like Reddit and Letterboxd: on Wednesday, Plex unveiled several social features aimed at changing how users interact with the platform. Notable among these is Discussions, a community forum where users can post comments and talk about movies or TV shows. Plex is likely hoping this forum will create a dedicated space that challenges Reddit’s dominance when it comes to community discussions of movies and shows. The company said it’s worked up a moderation system that uses a blend of AI and human input to moderate both visual and written content. Image Credits:Plex Another new feature is Lists, which lets users create, manage and share lists of their favorite movies and shows, react with emojis instead of simple star ratings, and share images. Later this year, Plex will add the ability to import existing lists from other platforms, and let users react and comment on their friends’ lists. Letterboxd and IMDb both offer user-generated lists. Additionally, Plex is adding a new Match Score feature that predicts how much a user might enjoy a particular title based on their viewing habits and preferences. “It looks at the things you watch and the way you rate them, and turns that into a simple percentage that tells you how closely a title lines up with what you tend to enjoy,” co-founder and chief product officer Scott Olechowski told TechCrunch. “The idea is to take the guesswork out of discovery, so instead of scrolling endlessly, you get a quick, personal read on whether something is likely to be for you.” The platform is also adding Alerts that will notify users about new activities related to lists, movies, shows and film professionals they follow. Lists are currently available to all Plex users, and Discussions is set to launch this month. Other features will be rolled out throughout the year. The new features aim to create a more community-driven content discovery experience, allowing users to share recommendations, compare opinions and connect over their favorite shows and films. “People are spending more time figuring out what to watch than ever before, and we’re seeing viewers are increasingly turning to friends, creators, and communities they trust for recommendations. Discovery has become a shared experience, and we think the products people use to find entertainment should reflect that,” Olechowski added. The new features come as Plex is grappling with an increasingly competitive entertainment landscape where streaming companies and social media platforms together vie for people’s attention. Netflix and Disney+ have even launched short-form video content within their apps in a bid to farm daily engagement. This isn’t Plex’s first foray into social networking. In 2023, the company launched “Discover Together,” which allowed users to create profiles and follow friends’ viewing activities. Last year, Plex rolled out public profiles and reviews for users. However, it’s important to note that this update also coincides with a significant price hike for Plex’s Lifetime Plex Pass, which will cost $749.99 from July 1. The staggering increase certainly caught the attention of users, especially since Plex just last year increased the Pass’ price from $119.99 to $249.99. Currently, Plex boasts over 42 million active users monthly across more than 180 countries and territories. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Lauren covers media, streaming, apps and platforms at TechCrunch. You can contact or verify outreach from Lauren by emailing laurenf.techcrunch@gmail.com or via encrypted message at laurenforris22.25 on Signal. View Bio

TechCrunchJun 3

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First Public macOS Kernel Exploit on Apple M5 Prepared Using Mythos Preview in Five Days

Spyware attacks on journalists, human rights defenders, and political dissidents are no longer rare or exotic. In early 2025, WhatsApp notified roughly 90 users — many of them journalists and civil society members across Europe — that they had been targeted by Israeli spyware company Paragon Solutions. Months later, Apple sent threat notifications to a new group of iOS users; forensic analysis confirmed two of them, both journalists, had been hit with Paragon’s Graphite spyware using a zero-click attack, meaning they didn’t even have to tap a link to be compromised. These aren’t isolated incidents. They’re the norm. For the last 15 years, security researchers have documented countless cases where government hackers have targeted and successfully compromised journalists, human rights defenders, critics, and political opponents. These attacks rely on expensive, sophisticated, and stealthy tools that allow their operators to hack into and install spyware on computers, but especially smartphones, which hold virtually all of the data about a person’s daily life. Spyware gives its operators virtually full access to the target’s device and data. Government spies can record phone calls, steal chat messages, access photos, and switch on the device’s camera and microphone to record ambient sound and record nearby conversations. Spyware also typically tracks a person’s real-time location. In response to these attacks, tech giants now provide their users with better defenses. In particular, Apple, Google, and Meta offer opt-in features specifically designed to counter targeted spyware attacks. Generally speaking, these features add extra protection, sometimes by turning off or limiting some regular features. It’s a tradeoff, but having used these myself for a long time, I have never found them to be too onerous or annoying to use. Tech companies, security researchers who have studied spyware for years, and we at TechCrunch, recommend that you use these features if you suspect you may be a target of government surveillance because of who you are or what you do. Even if you’re not, these security features will keep your data better protected from entering the wrong hands. No security measure is perfect, and it’s a constant effort to keep security flaws at bay. Spyware makers find new ways to hack into phones and services, then software makers learn from those attacks and respond. Rinse and repeat. But that doesn’t mean these features are not worth using. On the contrary; these features have been proven effective. “These features are free, easy to enable, and the best defense we have today against sophisticated spyware,” said Runa Sandvik, a security researcher who has worked to protect journalists and other at-risk communities for more than a decade. “If the features get in the way of something you need to do, you can easily turn them off again — meaning it costs very little to turn them on and try them out.” Here’s a recap of these features, and how to switch them on. Image Credits:TechCrunch / Screenshot / Apple’s Lockdown Mode Apple’s Lockdown Mode is available on all Apple devices, including iPhones. Apple says that when Lockdown Mode is enabled, “your device won’t function like it typically does.” In exchange for this inconvenience, your device will be more secure. There is evidence that Lockdown Mode has helped in the past. Citizen Lab found that Lockdown Mode stopped one spyware attack carried out with NSO Group’s Pegasus software. As recently as March, Apple said it has never detected a successful attack on an Apple device with Lockdown Mode enabled. This is what Lockdown Mode changes on your device when you turn it on: Attachments received on iMessage other than some images, video, and audio are blocked by default. Links and previews in iMessage are blocked and appear as non-linked web addresses. (You can copy and paste the links into Safari or another browser if you want.) Fonts, some images, and some web technol

TechCrunchMay 23

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iPhone 18 Pro to Launch in September With These 10 New Features

At long last, Android and iPhone users will be able to send each other end-to-end encrypted text messages. On Monday, end-to-end encrypted messaging is starting to roll out in beta for conversations between iPhone and Android users running the most up-to-date software. End-to-end encrypted (e2ee) messaging is an important privacy feature that makes users far less susceptible to surveillance by hackers, governments, or the companies that make these communication platforms. When these messages are sent between devices, they’re encrypted while in transit, making it near-impossible for anyone else to intercept and read the message. But until now, messages sent between iPhone and Android devices could not be end-to-end encrypted (e2ee), even though iMessage has been encrypted since its launch in 2011, and Android users have been able to communicate among themselves via e2ee since 2021. Over the years, iOS and Android users have had clunky communications — Android users can’t use Apple’s proprietary iMessage, but Apple refused to support RCS messaging, a more sophisticated upgrade to decades-old SMS texting, since 2020. Now the industry-standard texting protocol, RCS brings features like typing indicators, read receipts, emoji reactions, longer message lengths, and encryption to text messages. But Apple didn’t support RCS until 2023, once it finally caved due to regulatory pressure. Google had urged Apple to support RCS texting to make communication between their devices more seamless — this was such an issue that people sincerely thought about “green bubble stigma,” referring to the color of the message bubbles that iPhone users receive from Androids. Until Apple started supporting RCS, it was a common headache for iPhone users to get texts from their Android-using friends that would break group chats, or result in terrible quality multimedia sharing. Now, Apple’s long-awaited support of e2ee on RCS helps further close the gap between green and blue bubbles. End-to-end encrypted RCS messaging has only begun to roll out in beta, so users may not have access just yet. If a conversation between Google and Apple devices is encrypted, the users will see a lock icon that indicates that the chat is protected. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos. You can contact or verify outreach from Amanda by emailing amanda@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at @amanda.100 on Signal. View Bio

TechCrunchMay 11

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Meet Shapes, the app bringing humans and AI into the same group chats

You might think the big story out of Match Group’s first-quarter earnings is Tinder’s turnaround. The dating app’s revenue is slightly up again after quarter-after-quarter of declines. But we’d like to point to a comment the chief financial officer made about how the company is slowing its hiring right now because it needs more money to pay for AI tools for its employees. Ah, yes, the good ol’ “let’s blame AI” strategy! While speaking to analysts on the first-quarter earnings call, Match Group CFO Steven Bailey talked about how the dating app giant was investing in AI technology for internal use at the company — as well as how Match was paying for it. “We’re making a big push around AI enablement. We’re giving every employee in the company access to all the cutting-edge tools. We’re giving them the training they need to succeed. We’re setting expectations. We really want to become an AI-native company,” Bailey said. “We think it’s a huge opportunity. But these tools cost a lot of money, as I’m sure you know, and so the way we’re helping to pay for that is by slowing our hiring plans for the rest of the year,” he added. The company assured investors that the impact would be cost-neutral, as the slowed hiring and lower headcount would make up for the increased software expenses. Plus, Match Group is betting that the increased productivity from employees’ use of AI will ultimately increase revenue growth, the number-cruncher explained. While on the surface, this looks like another example of AI taking people’s jobs — in this case, forcing a company to lower its number of open positions — there’s likely more nuance to this story. Let’s keep in mind that Match Group’s flagship app, Tinder, has been struggling in recent years. This quarter may be the start of a turnaround, as monthly active users declined by 7% in March compared with the far-steeper 10% drop a year ago. Tinder registrations also grew for the first time since 2024, but by a mere 1%, as Bloomberg pointed out. This is perhaps a positive sign for Tinder. Or it might be a brief blip driven by users’ curiosity around various product improvements and new features, like IRL events. Time will tell. Dating meets a generational shift Match Group remains a company that has to work to squeeze more money out of an oft-dwindling, less active user base — which, to the company’s credit, it did exactly that. Match’s revenue was $864 million in the first quarter, up 4% year-over-year. However, its next-quarter estimates are coming in lower — around $850-$860 million, down 2% to flat year-over-year. All these struggles come after many months of what appears to be a growing disinterest in the use of dating apps by younger people. This generational shift sees people opting to meet up in real-life, perhaps by pursuing an interest, like running, book clubs, or a hobby that connects them with other people, which then, in turn, expands their network, increasing their chance of meeting someone new. The trend coincides with a resurgence of nostalgic tech, like digital cameras, flip phones, boomboxes, and even landlines, signaling a generation that’s feeling burned out by always-on connectivity and looking for analog pleasures. Match Group is aware of this significant shift and says it’s pivoting to address the challenge by increasing the number of its own IRL events. “Gen Z desperately wants to connect. They know they want to meet new people. They just want to do it in a low-pressure, low-stakes way that doesn’t feel like a job interview,” Match’s CFO Rascoff told investors on the call. “Traditional dating apps are very highly structured and can be intimidating to a user under 30. So, I think the growth of these alternative ways to meet new people speaks to how Gen Z is trying to find lower-pressure ways to connect.” “We’ve obviously adapted our roadmap to this reality,” he said. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affe

TechCrunchMay 6

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