Meta’s Threads has officially crossed the 500 million monthly active users milestone, the company announced on Monday, June 16, 2026, marking one of the most significant growth achievements for the platform since it launched in July 2023. The company says the milestone reflects its commitment to building alongside communities, guided by user feedback and a focus on what matters most to people.
Threads passed the 400 million monthly user mark last August, and the climb to 500 million extends a remarkable run on a surface where ads are already fully monetized. That growth trajectory tells a bigger story, one of a platform that nearly fell apart after its explosive debut but quietly rebuilt itself into a genuine force in the global social media landscape. The numbers now put Threads firmly in the conversation with X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, which it has been aggressively chasing over the past two years.
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To mark the occasion, Meta is not just celebrating the numbers. The company is exiting its Communities feature from beta and adding several capabilities designed to make topic-focused groups easier to find and participate in. A new Communities Hub will appear in the main navigation menu, giving users a cleaner way to switch between communities directly from their feeds. Communities will also receive distinct custom icons, and a new Community Progress feature will show users when a particular topic is approaching community status, building anticipation and encouraging participation.
Additional community features include a local communities option, starting with native-language tags in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, along with expanded champion status for the most active community members. Meta says it also plans to extend Live Chats to more communities in the coming weeks, with co-hosting capabilities and the option to share moments directly to user feeds.
Perhaps the most user-facing change in this rollout is the introduction of “Your Algo,” a new personalized feed control tool. Your Algo allows users to privately control their feed content by requesting to see more or less of specific topics for periods of one, three, or seven days. The company says only the individual user will be able to see those requests, making it a genuinely private preference tool. The feature builds on “Dear Algo,” which Meta introduced in February to let users send broader feedback signals to the recommendation algorithm. Both Dear Algo and Your Algo can now be managed from a single unified settings hub.
Your Algo is currently rolling out in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. A wider international rollout has not yet been announced.
Meta opened Threads ads to all users worldwide in February, meaning every new user added to the platform now contributes to a fully monetized inventory rather than a pre-revenue audience. Advertising has become an increasingly central part of Threads’ growth strategy, positioning it as a direct rival to X in the battle for digital ad spending.
From a platform that shed more than half its users within weeks of launching, to one now commanding half a billion monthly users, Threads has quietly rewritten its own story. With tighter community tools and better feed control now in place, Meta appears intent on making sure those users stick around this time.
