Since its launch on July 5, Meta’s Threads has surpassed 100 million users, including far-right figures and extremists, and the platform quickly became rife with harmful content as Meta carved out exceptions to its community guidelines. 

As Media Matters previously reported, Meta launched Threads without the fact-checking program that aims to prevent the spread of misinformation on Facebook and Instagram and seemingly abandoned hate speech policies. The company even succumbed to complaints from right-wing users such as Ian Miles Cheong and Donald Trump Jr., dropping warning labels the platform initially placed on accounts with a history of spreading misinformation and restoring a post from anti-LGBTQ social media account Libs of TikTok that was previously removed as hate speech. 

Since Media Matters last documented misinformation and hate speech on Threads, top right-wing accounts have posted harmful content dozens more times — which Meta has not moderated. 

Meta has allowed right-wing accounts to continue posting election and health misinformation, as well as conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden

Right-wing users on Threads have been able to peddle unchecked misinformation about the “rigged” 2020 election, COVID-19 vaccines, and abortion.

• Media Research Center supported podcaster Joe Rogan’s absurd claim that Joe Biden’s victory was “rigged by the media,” stating, “He’s right. The media stole the presidency in 2020.” 
• Epoch Times reporter and NTD News host Joshua Philipp claimed that “people have been conditioned during the COVID-19 pandemic to obey totalitarian policies they likely would have never gone along with in the past.”
• The Threads account for former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast shared a clip on Thursday featuring Naomi Wolf, who accused a prominent pharmaceutical company of committing fraud when it sought emergency authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine as proof that “people would have been worse off with the vaccine than without the vaccine, which is literally what we now know they are in terms of COVID and other side-effects.”
• Founder of anti-abortion organization Live Action Lila Rose claimed, “It’s easy to ignore a statistic but it’s harder to ignore a story. Exposing the brutality of abortion—2500 children killed a day—is difficult, because the world likes to look the other way & abortion’s victims are nameless & voiceless babies.”
• Live Action’s own Threads account is seemingly entirely dedicated to pushing dangerous claims about abortion, such as one post stating that birth control is “further promoting the sexual revolution’s agenda of convincing women that our liberation is chained to suppressing our fertility and killing our babies.” 
• OutKick host Tomi Lahren complained that “confused Libs” are advocating for women’s rights when they “don’t know what a woman is” and instead “protect abortion and mutilation.” 

Despite a lack of evidence, right-wing figures baselessly claimed that a small amount of cocaine recently found in an area of the White House frequented by visitors and tour groups really belonged to Hunter Biden.

• Rogan O’Handley, known online as DC Draino, wrote that it is “wild to me that Joe Biden helped pass the 1994 crime bill which imprisoned millions of black men for drug crime,” but “now when Hunter brings cocaine into the White House 30 years later, he gets a free pass once again.”
• Donald Trump Jr. also raised suspicions, stating: “Absolutely no one watching is surprised that the most heavily secured, monitored, and guarded house in the world could not figure out the culprit! What exactly does insufficient DNA mean? It means… Hunter Biden!!!”
• Right-wing personality Terrence K. William posted a meme implying the cocaine found in the White House is Hunter Biden’s.

Threads still isn’t enforcing the hate speech policies that govern Instagram, allowing users to post anti-LGBTQ, racist, and anti-immigrant rhetoric

Anti-LGBTQ attacks on Threads often include transphobic rhetoric and the “groomer” slur, as well as dangerous claims that the LGBTQ community is trying to “sexualize, sterilize and butcher” children. 

• Conservative commentator Brandon Tatum posted a video with the caption “The LGBTQ community is being used to destroy the black community further!”
• Teacher and host of the right-wing education podcast The Chalkboard Heresy Show Frank McCormick claimed, “Not even summer camp is safe from these exploitative groomers.” 
• Far-right and anti-LGBTQ account Gays Against Groomers reposted an image of its tweet that read, “No one cares that you’re gay or trans. They care that you’re trying to sexualize, sterilize and butcher children.”
• Grant Godwin, also known online as “The Typical Liberal,” shared a video proposing an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would require trans men to register for the draft. He stated, “I like where Rep. Tim Burchett’s head is at! Wanna be a boy? Time to do boy stuff. Or, hear me out, we can get back to reality.” 
• PragerU ambassador and former Today Is America president Xaviaer DuRousseau captioned a photo of Charlize Theron with her children: “Adopting two sons just to force them into dresses and a mentally ill lifestyle is so feral. This should be illegal.” 
• The Babylon Bee posted a link to its article misgendering U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Adm. Rachel Levine, for which the right-wing website’s account was previously suspended on Twitter (before being unilaterally restored under new owner Elon Musk).

Racist, anti-immigrant, and xenophobic hate speech on the platform have included fearmongering about an “invasion” of “illegal aliens,” the uncensored use of racial slurs, including the N-word, and attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and representation.

• Right-wing media personality and neo-Nazi collaborator Jack Posobiec has used Threads to spread cruel attacks against undocumented immigrants, falsely claiming that “illegal aliens are sex trafficking children and Joe Biden is helping them.”
• A video posted twice of white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes saying the N-word has not been taken down in over a week. 
• Bannon’s War Room linked to an Axios report on migration numbers with the caption: “It’s Called an Invasion—and Nations are finally waking up.” 
• Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk mocked the diverse casting of the live-action reboot of Snow White, calling it “Snow White and her DEI Dwarfs” and suggesting that “Disney has lost $900 million at the box office on recent films, and something tells me that figure is only going to get worse.”