Beware of Blue Checks

      Blue checks used to mean something good on social media. I used to be a sign that you were on an official page for a celebrity or public figure and that what was posted was coming from that person or their team. For less famous people with blue checks it meant that they had achieved some kind of status symbol, clout, that meant that they had arrived somehow at being popular enough for a verified seal on their account confirming that that account was their official one. That was all cool until Elon Musk came to Twitter with his fascist views and unhinged unstable behavior causing advertisers and users to leave in droves. In order to try to keep users and advertisers on board and make back some of the money he was losing, he decided to charge for blue check verification as a subscription and open it up to anyone and everyone. To get a blue check all you had to do was subscribe to a monthly paid plan. This is when things started going way down hill and they haven't stopped tumbling yet.

     Because people bought the hype and started paying for Twitter and getting blue checks, there is no longer any real credibility on any social media sites for celebrity accounts. Impersonators use celebrity names in their display name and get blue check subscriptions on not only Twitter but Instagram,Threads, and Facebook now. Because Twitter started it and it worked, all of the other major social media sites followed suit and offered the same thing, paid verification. Public figures have to constantly put out notices advising users not to fall for scams using their names because now that anyone can use the name and put a blue check beside it, you don't really know if an account really is the celebrity you think it is. You can't even always go by how many followers they have now because if 1M people fall for the same fake account then that account has 1M followers despite being fake. Platforms don't really do much anymore when you report impersonators. I have reported more BTS impersonation accounts  on Threads/ Instagram than I can count and I don't think a single one was ever taken down. Hybe/Big Hit put out a statement recently on X/Twitter advising ARMY to beware of impersonation accounts. There are official lists made by ARMY on X/Twitter and Threads that point out the real BTS accounts. BTS doesn't have any individual accounts for members on X/Twitter (just a joint account and Big Hit official account) and none of the members nor Hybe nor Big Hit is on Threads at all as of the writing of this post. 

     Beyond just getting to seem like a celebrity, having a blue check provides you with incentives like supposed better customer service if your account gets hacked. Twitter offers longer posts to blue check holders by allowing them more characters, the ability to edit posts, supposedly a better reach meaning posts guaranteed to be shown to more people on the app and the most diabolical of all incentives- pay for play with regard to engagement. Now I'm not saying that creators, editors, shouldn't be paid for their content. People who use it for good are fine. The blue checked ARMY accounts who got checks to protect their accounts from hacking (if that even really works) or to get more characters so you can make longer posts without having to break them into several threads, that 's all understandable. They subscribe for valid reasons. I'm not knocking those choices because that'a a legit reason to get a blue check. The issue I have is the misuse due to monetization incentives.

     On Threads you can qualify for the Threads Bonus Program. I believe the criteria is you have to have 1000 followers or more on Instagram and decent engagement according to IG. Not sure how many you have to have on Threads to qualify. Once you get into the program you are paid based on posts on Threads as long as they stay within the guidelines of Threads, IG, Meta. This has led to the same thing with blue checked troll accounts on Threads seeking engagement through manipulative means like the ones on Twitter. On Twitter, BTS related posts get bombarded with troll spam comments from blue check trolls. You can tell they aren't ARMY because they often are footballer bro squad types with Ronaldo or some footballer as their profile picture or memes as their profile pic. They go under posts about BTS that are popular and say rude things in order to rile up ARMY into commenting back to them. The comment equals engagement and if they get enough of that - the comments , good or bad, they get paid. They will play the evil role of making hateful comments to make ARMY mad enough to comment back or some will pretend to be interested in BTS and will ask questions or make praising comments that are fake just so they can get ARMY to comment something positive back because all comments count towards their paycheck. In my opinion fake baiting positive comments are manipulative too so I steer clear if something looks fishy because I've seen people pander to ARMY to get attention then just when they have a ton of ARMY attention they turn on BTS and ARMY.  They get pulled into fan wars or get attention from other fandoms who want them to listen to and promote their guys. We've seen this happen with "reactors" on YouTube. 

     The other side of this is the blue check rage bait paid accounts. They make whole threads that are engagement bait hoping to get people angry so they will argue and the poster will get paid based on views and comments likes and shares. These are the people posting rude things like, "which fandom is the most toxic" and "which member of BTS is the hottest?" (seemingly innocent question but put out to make people argue about their looks and draw solos and visual stans into confrontation with OT7. ARMY is the largest most active fandom and these trolls know it. They use ARMY for engagement. The person posting the last question wasn't even ARMY and the first question was a set up to get fan wars started in their comment section. Trolls think that hiding their IG link will stop people from going to their IG to check them out. Well I will still go and sometimes that is the most telling of all. Asking questions to ARMY to get engagement when you stan another group and never mention BTS or don't follow them on IG is a giant red flag to me. Threads says they are looking at ways to combat engagement bait posts but I will believe it when I see it. 

   When you see posts like this it should be an instant block. I know I have caught myself responding before but I am reminding myself to stay focused and just block. Don't pay their bills by commenting. Don't quote to make a comment, don't re-share, don't screenshot to discuss because all of these things count as engagement. It's best to ignore. If you see a page that's claiming to be Big Hit, Hybe, or any member of BTS on Threads and it is blue checked, as of now it is fake. In the future always ask other ARMY or look for the official list (which I will post on the information page on this blog). If something seems suspect like you are suddenly seeing bait posts, swipe "not interested" and block. There are several accounts that don't have blue checks that still do the bait post for engagement thing hoping to get likes and follows. Just avoid it at all costs and resist the urge to comment. Trust me I know the urge to clap back is strong and I have fallen for it myself but taking a breath and not giving these accounts what they want is better than telling them to f -off. 

      

Threads Tips and Information

      Over the past few weeks we have been going through a lot and there has been an influx of new users to the site. With this influx a lot of us are getting new ARMY followers (who are always welcome) and we should help them understand the kind of ARMY culture we are trying to build on Threads. A lot of us left Twitter or never had it so we don’t pop back and forth between Twitter/X and Threads. I’ve seen a lot of posts recently, over the past week in particular that seem like people don’t really understand that Threads is Meta which is with Facebook and IG and so it does not work the same way as Twitter. The basic parts are the same but there are differences that you may take advantage of on Twitter/X that do not exist or don’t work the same way on Threads so using the same methods as Twitter are a waste of time on Threads. I thought I’d put together a tips and tricks and info post for new users and even users that are not as new that may benefit from the info.

Curate your timeline

     On any social media platform the first thing you want to do is make sure you are getting to see what you want to see in your feed and not a lot of what you don’t. The Threads algorithm is pretty easy to train to show you what you want to see. I have played with it a lot and it’s pretty simple I guess. If you want to see more BTS in your feed the little posts people do “dear algorithm or dear threads–show me blah blah blah” don’t work. They’re fun because it shows people your interests but you haven’t actually told the algorithm what you want to see, you told users. So in order to see what you want to see you have to interact with what you want to see. This works and sometimes it can be a negative so you have to use your engagement carefully. By engagement I mean likes, comments, follows. 

    I am BTS ARMY. I like a few other groups like TXT and Le Sserafim, and P1Harmony. When other groups I don’t like show on my feed I swipe left to show I’m not interested or I will click the 3 dots on the top (or bottom depending on the updates) of a post and click not interested. That tells the algorithm not to show me that because I am not into it. I still may see things from the other groups but this makes it a little less likely. 

     If you do like something you should give it a like or comment or both. If you are seeing no BTS on your feed and you want to see more, type “BTS”  into the search bar and go through the posts and like the ones that go with what you want to see more of on your feed. Like a lot of them to train the algorithm. Leave a few comments as well. It could be nothing more than a purple heart on a post. That shows you are engaging with content and the system picks up on that. Of course people may follow you after you like their posts. That’s normal. Don’t feel obligated to follow back everyone who follows you either. Just check their accounts and if you want to, follow back, if not then don’t worry about it. It’s never required.

     When you see something you don’t like you should block or mute or keep scrolling past it because if you comment that counts as engagement. Negative comments still count toward the algorithm so you are going to still get posts in your feed on that topic that may be negative. You are also inadvertently spreading the content to others on your timeline by interacting with it. More on that later.     

     You can use muted words feature to further curate your timeline. You can go to “settings” and “privacy” and go to “hidden words” and choose words you want to mute. I put groups I don’t want to see, fandom names,  topics, commonly overused phrases (seeing people mute phrases like ‘unpopular opinion’ and ‘can we normalize’ because they’re getting annoying), and anything else I can think of. It doesn’t work on photos if the caption doesn’t have these words in them or videos but it does help clear out what you don’t want to see. If someone comments on a post or shares a post with one of those words or if it is trending it will show blocked out to you as “content not available” or it may show as “some comments have been hidden” on a post.

If you make a post and someone leaves a comment that you don't want to deal with you can hide that comment from the feed. Just click on the three dots where you'd report a comment and click "hide from everyone" and that comment won't show with the other comments. They won't get any engagement on their comment. If you want to go a step further, hide then block so no one sees it in your comment section and the commenter gets blocked so they can't come back and say anything else. This is what I call protecting your peace on the app. Let the trolls talk to the wall.

     

Reporting

     Reporting posts on Threads works through Instagram (IG). You report a post on Threads and you get the result of the report on your IG notifications. I find that they use AI to determine if something violates their terms and conditions and often it is way off the mark. I have reported horrible things like sexist bullying and racist bullying only to have Threads say it doesn’t violate terms and conditions and to just block the person. People will post things in code now (spelling things with symbols or misspelling intentionally to avoid detection) so a lot slips by the AI they use. You can always report anything you see that is not appropriate like bullying, people sharing unauthorized photos including AI edits, misinformation etc but IG/Threads doesn’t often take action because the system doesn’t see it as a problem. Some things are best sent to Hybe/Big Hit Legal through their portal. The legal team at Big Hit Hybe will collect evidence to pursue individuals in court. Every few months we get notifications from Weverse updating us on legal actions being taken and though they don’t often name the people being sued we know based on the details of the case what we have sent to them and that our evidence from social media is going towards pursuing these offenders.

     If you report something on Threads or IG and it is sent back saying it doesn’t violate terms and conditions, you can click the button to have them review it again. If it is something I feel they are totally missing and should be removed ASAP I will keep clicking the button to appeal. On the last option to appeal they will ask if you want to send it to the Oversight Board. There’s a questionnaire you have to fill out for this one and it can take a few minutes. I reserve those for flat out bullying and malicious content that is harmful so more so bullying of people who have seen or will see the content as opposed to BTS who is not on the app. If someone is bullying ARMY and I see it and report it and IG/Threads does nothing then I will send those all the way up and see how far they go. 

Blocking

     I know there are ARMY that don’t like blocking people. I don’t know why because it’s not like the app tells the person you blocked them. As far as I know there aren’t any API apps for Threads yet like there were for Twitter that let you know so you could block back so it’s still very anonymous unless you go through your following  person by person to see who blocked you. It’s very tedious to do so I doubt people will sit there and do it depending on how many people they are following . You should feel free to block people if you don’t want to see what they post. Blocking is self-care to me. If I can protect my peace by blocking then I do so quite often. The difference between muting and blocking is that if you mute them you just don’t see their posts unless you go to their page or unless someone shares it. Blocking you don’t see their posts and they don’t see yours. Muted they can still see and like your posts. They can comment too but comments get hidden. 

     Blocking keeps them off of other people’s timelines too. The Yoongi police line photos are still being shared almost daily. Some by new accounts looking for engagement. I have seen a lot of people saying their timelines are curated so they aren’t seeing it. There are several good reasons for this. Blocking keeps things from being shared so the blocklists going around are doing their jobs. People commenting asking those sharing the photos to remove them are unintentionally sharing them as well because when you comment on a post your reply and the post you are commenting on both get shared to your feed. If they block instead, you see nothing. People with more followers are more likely to see these things because they have more people in their circles who could reply to something or share it. There’s no algorithm penalty for how many people you block or anything silly like that either like you get seen less if you block more. It doesn’t work that way. Even if it did I would rather have my circle of positive well meaning ARMY than all the drama seeking ones coming from X now and starting issues we don’t need on Threads.

Trending Phrases and Hashtags

     One Twitter thing that people are trying to make happen on Threads is trending terms and hashtag trends. Sorry to break it to you but as of right now trending particular phrases as is done on Twitter with blocks of text (ex : Yoongi superstar, Yoongi little meow meow, ARMY stands with Yoongi, Yoongi is the king and boss) typed over and over and being asked to comment or reply with the same--that doesn’t work on Threads and can get your account suspended. The AI that does security against spam can pick that up and read it as repetitive bot behavior so I don’t recommend doing this at all on Threads. I had my account on Threads suspended for 7 days for commenting “thank you” to people who wished me happy birthday. It has happened to several people and they suspended one woman’s main account for a month for the same. 

     Trending topics is not even something all Threads users have yet. To see what’s trending go to your search page on Threads. The trending topics are right beneath this search bar if you have them and there’s usually no more than 5. It’s hard to try to trend when only 5 things are going to show as opposed to the whole list of like 20+ I guess that Twitter has and they have their trending broken into categories as well. If I’m not mistaken I think the trending on Threads is set to regional so you usually see what’s popular in your area and that makes it harder to trend fandom type of things.

     Only one hashtag on Threads counts as an actual hashtag. If you use the symbol or the hashtag button then your tag turns into a blue hyperlink that is clickable and will send the person who clicked on it to a list of other posts with the same words tagged or words in it in general. The posts with a ton of hashtags won’t really trend as hashtags. The keywords may still show in trends if enough people use them in a post. So strangely enough if you type a word in a post and enough people to make it trend do the same (no one knows the number needed on Threads and trends don’t show numbers here) then it may still trend. Adding a hashtag to the front of a word and packing a ton of them into a post does nothing. You’d probably be better off just listing the words as keywords separated by a comma. It’s strange I know but that’s how it works. Looking at the top 5 I have trending right now as I type this there are posts included that don’t have a single hashtag but do have the words or phrases. It’s probably a better precaution not to add a ton of words with the hashtag symbol too and just add the words separated by commas if you want to trend them because the AI security thing may flag your posts as spam based on tons of hashtag symbols. Better safe than sorry.

Private accounts

     Private accounts are such a pet peeve on Threads. As an introvert I understand some people may want to keep their accounts private or be lurkers and just see what other people are talking about without participating. I get it but here’s the thing on Threads (which I think is so stupid but they didn’t ask users for their opinion) – if you have a private account on Threads, and you comment on a post NO ONE CAN SEE IT. Your private account status makes your comments private so only people you follow who follow you back can see your comments. If you follow me and your account is private I will not follow you back just to see if you pass the vibe check and then I can see your comments. Why would I do that when you can already see what I’m about? If I don’t like your content then I will have to go back and unfollow you anyway and it’s a waste of time for me.  I will just remove you as a follower and maybe block you because it says in my bio not to follow me which means you didn’t bother to check my bio before following me. 

     I know IG ties Threads to your account so if you don’t want a Threads tied to your personal account set up another IG to use Threads. That way you can go off private. If my page is open and we’re all about communicating on Threads and actually engaging with each other’s accounts then we should be doing that and private accounts are the opposite of that. 

Impersonator accounts

     No members of BTS nor Hybe official nor Big Hit official are on Threads. There are several accounts that use the members names in their display name and use versions of Big Hit Ent or Big Hit Entertainment or Hybe Official and official is often spelled incorrectly. As of right now, there are NO official accounts on Threads for BTS. The use of the members' names is not necessarily a problem but if you see accounts using their names and pictures and talking back to the followers in first person (ex; ‘Hi I’m Jimin of BTS and I miss my ARMY’ ) report and block that page immediately. Don’t even engage because that spreads it. There are strange people who are either super gullible or they enjoy cosplaying with these fake accounts. They ignore us when we alert them to the fact that these pages are fake because they like the idea that they are actually talking to the guys. Well what these accounts will do is get the users to believe they are legit and after a while they will start to spread malicious rumors or they will start DM-ing users and asking for money. The people who fall for this after they have been warned are beyond help at that point. The make up lies like they lost their Black Card and start on the usual money scams. It has happened to several people on Twitter already. I have seen some accounts start to try to get sympathy by saying the guys are having a hard time in the military and are scared. So stupid. They put this fear into the fans then start begging for cash or gift cards (where they are spending gift cards while enlisted I don’t know but gift cards would be the first red flag to run the other way). They also always speak English which should be another red flag. Just stay away from all of these fake accounts. Blue checks mean nothing as they can be bought on all social media platforms now by subscribing. If they do join Threads then the official Big Hit Instagram (IG) will let us know. 

     There are other things I want to address about Threads and how we want to keep things peaceful as it used to be a few months ago but I will leave that for another post. I don’t want to make this one too lengthy. Hope the tips help you enjoy the app more and help us keep the community more drama free.