What a 24-Hour Threads Experiment Taught Me About Links and Community

Exploring how platform design and community interaction shape visibility for Black creators

Nov 07, 2025

Abstract

This article presents findings from a 24-hour social media experiment conducted on Threads, exploring how link placement affects post visibility and engagement. Using the same text prompt and Substack link across three post formats, I examined how the platform’s algorithm amplifies or suppresses external links. Results revealed that posts leading with relational dialogue outperformed those leading with links, particularly when the link appeared in the second post of a Thread. The findings illustrate how community-centered engagement can bypass algorithmic bias, especially for Black creators navigating digital spaces shaped by misogynoir and visibility inequity.

Introduction

As a clinician, researcher, and digital storyteller working at the intersections of psychology, representation, and nerd culture, I’m always thinking about how platforms shape visibility, especially for Black women creators. Over the past several years, research has demonstrated that algorithms frequently replicate offline racial and gender biases, amplifying some voices while silencing others (Brock, 2020; Bailey, 2021). My work sits within this conversation, investigating how Black creators (especially Black femmes) develop community-centered strategies to be seen, heard, and engaged online despite systemic invisibility.

The experiment I conducted emerged from my lived curiosity: why do certain posts on Threads seem to circulate widely while others, especially those with links, fade almost instantly? I suspected what many Black creators already know: that the platform’s design prioritizes native engagement while de-emphasizing outbound links. But I also wanted to see how community discourse, or what Florini (2014) defines as the “cultural markers of Black digital communication,” might shift these patterns.

Black digital discourse often relies on humor, call-and-response, affirmation, and intertextual play, all forms of connection that precede content. These discourse markers transform social media into a space of relational visibility, not just self-promotion (Florini, 2014; Sobande, 2020). Through my AfroNerd lens, which I’ve curated as a blend of media psychology, social psychology, and Black digital cultural studies, I wanted to explore whether centering community tone before sharing content could counteract the algorithmic invisibility that Bailey (2021) links to misogynoir in digital spaces.

Methods

This project used a 24-hour observational design to measure how Threads distributes posts containing external links. My hypothesis was that link placement affects visibility and engagement, with links posted after initial interaction performing better than those in the first post.

To maintain consistency, I used the same prompt and the same Substack link across all conditions:

“I’m tryna see something:
How many of y’all see this?
drmercedessamudio.substack.com.”

I posted three versions:

A text attachment where Threads rendered the link as a non-clickable text box.
A link in the first post, which generated a live Substack preview card.
A link in the second post of a two-part Thread, with the first post containing only text.

After 24 hours, I recorded views, likes, comments, and reposts. I also conducted qualitative analysis by observing who engaged (followers vs. non-followers), tone of comments, and community overlap, particularly among Black and Black femme creators.

Experiment

Each condition served as a miniature case study of how Threads balances algorithmic behavior with community participation over 24 hours:

Condition 1: Text Attachment Post. The link appeared as a static gray box without metadata.
Condition 2: Link in First Post. The Substack link appeared immediately, creating a clickable preview card.
Condition 3: Link in Second Post. The first post contained the text prompt; the link appeared in a follow-up reply.

Results

Across all three posts, content and timing remained identical; only the link structure changed. Engagement data after 24 hours showed clear differentiation:

Text Attachment: 262 views, 11 likes, 6 comments, 1 repost.
Link in First Post: 72 views, 2 likes, 3 comments, 0 reposts.
Link in Second Post: 3,200 views, 203 likes, 38 comments, 1 repost.

Quantitative Summary

The link-in-second-post condition outperformed all others by approximately 1,122% in reach and over 1,700% in engagement relative to the link-in-first-post condition. The correlation between link placement and engagement intensity (r ≈ .82) indicates a strong positive relationship: as the relational sequencing increased (i.e., the link was delayed), engagement also expanded.

Qualitative Summary

In the text attachment condition, engagement came primarily from Black creators and supporters of Black digital work, especially Black femme-identifying users. Responses such as “I can see it!” reflected a community-driven approach over algorithmic amplification.

In the link-in-first-post condition, engagement dropped significantly, consisting mainly of technical curiosity (“Did you really post this 11 hours ago?”). No visible network engagement emerged.

In contrast, the link-in-second-post Thread generated rich banter and relational participation. Comments included humor (“I ain’t no snitch”), affirmation (“We see youuuu”), and casual solidarity: all hallmark features of Black digital discourse (Florini, 2014). One commenter noted they hadn’t followed me before but did so because of the post, demonstrating both algorithmic and relational reach. Many commenters were repeat engagers from my AfroNerd content, and likes came from a mix of followers and non-followers, suggesting cross-community expansion.

Discussion

The results confirm that Threads’ algorithm deprioritizes posts containing live external links in their first position, a pattern consistent with broader social media research showing suppression of outbound content (Sobande, 2020). However, the link-in-second-post condition demonstrates that relational discourse, particularly the call-and-response tone typical of Black digital communities, can disrupt this suppression.

In other words, connection precedes amplification. When I began the Thread with a conversation rather than promotion, the algorithm responded as though the content were purely social, allowing it to circulate before detecting the link. That sequence mirrors the way Black users have historically navigated visibility through humor, vernacular, and community signaling to foster their presence in spaces not designed for them (Brock, 2020; Florini, 2014).

This experiment also offers a subtle commentary on misogynoir and platform bias. As Bailey (2021) explains, misogynoir operates algorithmically by invisibilizing Black women’s labor, creativity, and authority online. My results show that community-led engagement strategies (i.e., those rooted in cultural authenticity and humor) can reclaim visibility on those very platforms that minimize it. Through my AfroNerd framework, I interpret this as both algorithmic literacy and digital resistance: knowing how systems work and using culture to subvert them.

Beyond algorithmic mechanics, these results speak to media psychology’s interest in parasocial and communal relationships. Audiences don’t only engage because of information; they engage because of resonance, identification, and participation. By leading with a familiar cultural tone and delaying the promotional element, I engaged users’ sense of belonging before their sense of consumption. That’s community psychology in action, right in front of us.

Future Research

This project opens the door for further exploration of how Black creators leverage cultural discourse to navigate algorithmic bias. Future studies might:

Replicate this experiment across platforms (Instagram, Bluesky, X) to compare link visibility patterns.
Analyze time-of-day posting effects or include multimedia elements (video, image, carousel).
Conduct qualitative coding of comments to identify discourse markers, such as humor, affirmation, or cultural signaling.
Explore how intersectional identities (particularly among Black femmes, queer creators, and neurodivergent users) influence engagement networks under similar algorithmic conditions.

This work underscores how Black digital creators continue to model resistance through community, creativity, and data-driven awareness. Our posts are not merely content; they are case studies in how culture bends the algorithm toward connection.

What do you think of the results of my mini-Threads experiment?

References

Bailey, M. (2021). Misogynoir transformed: Black women’s digital resistance. New York University Press.
Brock, A. (2020). Distributed blackness: African American cybercultures. NYU Press.
Florini, S. (2014). “Tweets, Tweeps, and Signifyin’: Communication and cultural performance on ‘Black Twitter.’” Television & New Media, 15(3), 223–237.
Sobande, F. (2020). The digital lives of Black women in Britain. Palgrave Macmillan.
Boylorn, R. (2016). “On being at home with myself: Blackgirl autoethnography as research praxis.” International Review of Qualitative Research, 9(1), 44–58.