Threads has passed 2M sign ups in the first 2 hours
threads.net
threads.net
So Threads looks like it’ll be text posts with your Instagram friends. Which is fine, I suppose. But not a Twitter replacement.
Twitter.
Think of it as the match Zuckerberg lit to mask the stench of the Horizon Worlds carcass.
you can skip this step
I’m convinced they’ll keep jamming your Instagram and Threads identities into each other to keep engagement high.
[0]: copy/past from threads.net: "Soon, you'll be able to follow and interact with people on other fediverse platforms, like Mastodon. They can also find people on Threads using full usernames, like @username@threads.net."
As soon as they grow over the need for interoperability, they kill it off.
Google plus failed. But a few of us loved it, because of its interface and ease of managing for the large part, but also because we interacted differently with and with different people than on Facebook instagram etc.
Whereas Facebook to your point is dominated by my friends and family (but less and less their original content and more and more with copied "memes), Google plus rapidly developed shared circles of interesting people with interesting things to say. Thay we could flow. Pretty quickly my google plus was a rich mine of unbelievably high quality content from fabulous people. Not even HN has quite reached thay zenith for me.
(Twitter by all accounts does that for some. I have not been able to get over / subjugate it's insane formatting and threading limitations and sorting and algorithms and submit them to my will).
Naive question here from a non-user: With all that goodness, why did the product fail?
They're much more interested in instant gratification and mindless entertainment, which was sufficiently catered to on the original platforms, so the critical mass of people never switched over.
Another factor surely was that - at the time - reddit was another platform for high quality discussions on specific topics and made it much easier to find like minded people through the subreddit segmentation.
While the circle functionality worked decently in g+, you still had to actually create and join them, which meant it was too exclusionary and involved to really get going.
First and foremost, it's a Google product. Google's own internal structural failings are predisposed to create and then kill products.
It had a different usage model ("Circles") to the things people already had and understood. Twitter, Facebook etc. And it didn't map clearly to those existing understood structures.
It was more complicated for end users, was unintuitive and badly explained. I didn't "get it" until someone either on HN or Reddit explained how it was supposed to work.
Google tried to use Google+ to replace YouTube comments. Something YouTube users didn't want, something it wasn't good at, and something that was badly communicated and extremely badly received. People actively resented the product as a result.
Google mishandled some big issues. Requiring "real names" went down like a lead balloon, something they had to walk back years later, but not before using it to replace YouTube comments.
It could have been lucrative and sticky glue between Google properties. Instead it was the crappy old spiderweb you accidentally get stuck to your face while cleaning out the shed.
Whereas for me, circles were amazing to both send and receive. I have a group of friends that are interested in photography, and a group of friends interested in computers, and a group for astronomy and philosophy and bicycling and whatnot. So I can place people and or they can subscribe to what they want to see from me.
Similarly, people would create a circle of say interesting photographers, and you can then share that circle and copy that circle and modify that circle and subscribe to that circle.
What ended up happening for me is that after a bit of time, I had a daily feed that was just... way better than any algorithm or AI or ML or privacy-invasive company ever managed to accomplish. Just high quality stuff all around. But also my friends and followers also received better quality stuff from me, as I could tailor who gets to see what.
I also liked the interface at the time, seemed to actually use my wide screen monitor, be clean, and relatively uninvasive (open FB on a 32" monitor and you barely get more useful text than on the 6" phone to this day)
Instead of developing it further they forced plus logins onto youtube, and after struggling for a year with that, and seeing no meaningful adoption, they rolled everything back, and then sunset Plus.
See also Steve Yegge's platforms rant: https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 Originally accidentally posted publicly to Google Plus
What will keep me from using it at least as of today is that I can’t tell it to only show content (plus ads I guess) of accounts that I follow. I never ever ever want to see posts from some influencer or something - if they pay to advertise then fine, but otherwise hell no.
So far Twitter has the staying power for me but I’m excited to see what develops here.
I also have a very different Twitter space from my FB space. Though my IG is also different from my FB.
I had a different reaction. "Oh they started with my Insta list which isn't what I want. I'll keep them for now and slowly replace them with stuff I use Twitter for." In other words, not a big deal to me and not something that immediately stood out as being an issue.
But what isn't in the app yet is a "trending" / "recommended" section, which I imagine is ready to go once they bootstrap enough data for it. Any person or entity with PR value or internet clout is likely already gearing up to post across both platforms, so a typhoon of data is about to flow in.
Once that exists then they can move to the next stage of enveloping most of what Twitter has to offer.
My question is, will Elon ban people from posting links to their Threads accounts?
No competitor could ask for a better time to launch with Twitter and Reddit users disaffected.
FB have the experience, reach, resources and timing to win here. Their biggest problems will be other well-funded attempts, but I can't think of any other blue-chips with the same experience or initial advantages (eg social userbase) to bootstrap with.
I'll be buying some FB shares later.
I don't get the response either. But I've def seen HN folks react without any sort of logic to things so maybe this is one of those times...?
> No competitor could ask for a better time to launch with Twitter and Reddit users disaffected.
I immediately noticed it's branded with Instagram and not Facebook which I think is smart. Insta is seen as "for old people" by the gen Z crowd (that's a direct quote from a friend's kid) but not nearly as old as the FB crowd. I suspect that the disaffected Reddit crowd and the Twitter users more likely fit this demographic.
With that said, my god I would be so happy if something overtook Twitter. As much as I'm not a fan of Meta, Twitter is on the bottom of my list.
I can already see similarities in Threads, and it's only just begun:
1. Threads is app-only, there is no desktop version.
2. Your feed is populated by algorithmically sourced content, not just the posts of the accounts you follow.
3. You can't delete threads without deleting the Instagram account it's coupled with.
I would also argue:
4. You can't make a threads account without signing up to Instagram.
All four are attempts to increase company metrics, but which are clearly user-hostile, and will ultimately backfire. I actually find (1) to be inexplicably stupid.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/datasafety?id=com.instagr...
If the app uses health data through Apple HealthKit you would probably noticed it because the app would have to ask for permission first.
Just think about the rich data they could collect in 2023! Tracking changes in your heart rate and sleep quality on the basis of your app use!
[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/06/30/32...
It’s probably only legal in jurisdictions with none (or almost none) privacy laws.
Location - for providing localized content (disabled by default)
Personal Info - for providing log in and personalizing content (questionable)
Financial Info: For in app payment/subscription (disabled by default)
Health - for personalizing content (not present in app and could be mislabeled by me)
Messages - For automating 2 factor auth (disabled by default)
Photos - For sending photos and videos (disabled by default)
Audio - For sending audio (disabled by default)
Files - For sending and saving files (disabled by default)
Calendar - Not 100% sure, but some guesses could be content personalization and/or time based events in app (could be mislabeled by me) (disabled by default)
Contacts - For establishing your social network (disabled by default)
App activity - This could be suspect for sure, but also useful as a troubleshooting/debug mechanism (not present in app)
App info and performance - troubleshooting/debug mechanism
Device ID - Security, Ad personalization
---
That said, I just installed in on my Android device and some considerations:
1) The suspect permission (App Activity) is not requested or present in the permissions list. Nor is health. Financial is better worded in that it is requesting "Google Play billing service"
2) Only Notifications permission is enabled by default. Camera, Contacts, Location, Microphone, Photos and Videos, etc are all explicitly disable, presumably till needed by the app at some point (meaning you'll know when and why they make use of it).
That said, it is a social network prioritizing text based discussion. Using location to prioritize content local to you seems appropriate (and is disabled by default, so you'd need to enable it via prompt).
Things like "Personal information" requesting "Political or religious beliefs", "Sexual orientation", etc. have some consideration of being problematic certainly.
I'm not entirely sure why the health permission, I listed for personalizing content, but it is honestly just a guess. Does not actually appear to be a permission present in the app currently.
Regarding calendar, the only other permission I labeled with personalizing content, it is disabled by default, and could possibly be used for other purposes (scheduling events, etc) so without knowing more it is a guess and possibly mislabeled by me.
https://twitter.com/nikitonsky/status/1676668138866311169
(And for non logged in users, continuation: https://twitter.com/nikitonsky/status/1676668144499281940 and https://twitter.com/nikitonsky/status/1676668146663538688)
~30 requests to load this, totaling at ~5.5 Mb.
18 of those requests, accounting for 4 Mb, is just JavaScript.
How many divs does it take them to center 1 word? Glad you asked! About 13. How many CSS classes? About 90.
Yes, 90 distinct CSS classes. 13 nested divs. To center one word
And yes, users do care about this crap.
But you can never leave
They had the opportunity to learn directly from Twitter's mistakes, and they failed right from the start.
Facebook was bootstrapped off existing IRL social networks (i.e. Harvard undergrads)
As for word-of-mouth spread at Harvard about Facebook, well that's not different than anything else. Word of mouth is always a part of marketing for any product. You still needed to manually look up your friends or your friend's friends and even to see what was up you'd have to visit their profile (until the feed came out later). Facebook didn't start off by showing you thousands of people you didn't care about, it did the opposite, it wanted you to connect with people you knew IRL.
Some will say, "well, why not Zuck?" Well, androids still have that uncanny valley effect and they're not quite as relatable.
Which is the point.
* Yes, please create a starter feed for me of popular content.
* No, I want to start with a blank feed so that I can gradually add things on my own.
That way there's both an explanation of why all those strangers are listed, and a mechanism to curate more carefully.
The literal first handful of things she saw were transphobia, racism, misogyny, or conspiracy theories.
Updated Date: 2023-04-07T13:53:29Z
Creation Date: 1997-05-27T23:00:00ZWell i guess we will see. I think threads.net works in multiple ways, and the .net stigma doesnt matter anymore with so many TLDs, and kinda makes sense for social app.
I know someone that sold a .io for a ridonculous sum. And again I think if fb/meta wants to do something they are in a place to make an offer the holder wont refuse.
I would love to hear an explanation of why they chose a .net. I always think of it as an OG TLD that throws back to a time when the internet didn’t suck, but I doubt that’s it. Lol.
It can’t be a cost thing, can it?
Some people have been theorizing that Facebook will sue them to get the .com. Apparently, Facebook has been using the Threads name before the current owners of the .com, but I don’t know if this is true.
.net is almost as valuable as .com right now, and that additional value .com has is dropping over time.
Search Engines don't care and people have normalized the extended TLD space since the 2010s, since URLs in general are just scary to non-technical people anyway. Even with an aging (on average) population, we will have all grown up with this mindset.
^thread.net (not threads.net) was a webhost with cheap shared hosting for PHP, Perl, etc in the late 1990s
iirc he got a pretty good price, but nothing like if he'd known who the buyer was.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/17/instagram-will-shut-down-i...
From WayBack, it looks like they bought the domain in 2010:
https://web.archive.org/web/20191001000000*/http://threads.n...
I use Instagram to network with friends “outside of work” and largely outside of the political sphere, and scroll through memes and silly content. It’s kind of like “friends + America’s funniest home videos”.
Twitter is all about politics, current events, thought influencers, and work networking. Totally different sphere. I don’t want to share silly stuff with friends on Twitter, or share work and my thoughts about current events and my industry on Instagram. Not to mention that my Instagram account, as well as virtually all of by friends’ accounts, are private.
I feel like by inviting people to follow their Instagram friends, Meta immediately precluded “taking on Twitter.”
This is a rather narrow view of what the site is used for. It's also about media, art, and live music -- things that overlap heavily with Instagram.
For example, I've found that you unfortunately can't avoid Twitter when keeping up with the underground electronic music scene in the US. Discord and Reddit have made some strides in replacing it, but not much.
Xenolinguist, Mindex, Voljum, TheBusiness, Maxfield, ToneVizion, Omnist, Josh Teed, Nyquist, EOS, Tripp St, Aleph, Lemondoza, kLL sMTH
Most of these names are on Soundcloud and/or Bandcamp.
It's Americanized electronic bass, dubstep, halftime, and IDM with a psychedelic slant. This kind of stuff might not be everyone's cup of tea :)
And those like myself who are no longer interested in the current iteration of social apps do not need another offering from this iteration of social apps.
Discoverability is also pretty awful with a ton of cringe "influencer content" polluting my main feed. I don't want to necessarily block MrBeast, I just don't want to see him when I don't follow him.
In any case, my prediction is that this experiment is going to be comparable to when they tried to copy Snapchat's story feature or when reels were meant to replace TikTok. These were nice cute distractions, but didn't materially impact Snapchat's business or TikTok's popularity. And in spite of their blunders, I think Twitter is here to stay.
I learned about the trick to search for "saymore" from a family member and see the red invite button on the search bar. She learned from some random.
Who was sanctimoniously instructing people to 'collectively be more civil'.
Not a platform I want to use, but the App seemed decent; smooth UI animations, clean interface, simple onboarding with an overall decent UX.
I think Instagram people who are Twitter curious will jump on it.
If they can get Celeb style Tweets and memes without having to interact with the Garbage Fire that is Twitter, then I think it's going to be a nice easy win for Meta.
Not a raging multi-billion dollar success like Instagram, but an OK casual slow burn that offers value to Instagram users.
I'm not saying Twitter is going to be around 20 years from now, but I do think the reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.
That was indication to me that claims of Twitter's death are, indeed, greatly exaggerated as always.
I don't doubt some people are getting rate limited, but I also have no doubt now that those people are the vocal minority while everyone else keeps on tweeting.
[1]: https://twitter.com/fgoproject/status/1676426390625812481
Web mobile UI is horrible though.*
* It doesn’t exist. Just a page to telling you to get the app. >.>
I downloaded it directly from the App Store because I’ve heard about it through external channels. Are they somehow notifying users to check Threads via their other apps (Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp)?
Yep, at least on Instagram, there's a "follow me on Threads" sticker you can add to your stories. (I rarely check FB these days, but there's probably something on there too.)
I suspect the surprise release today is to manage server load / "soft" launch. Wait until tomorrow for the real metrics.
Where as the entire Fediverse has 11 million registered users in 7 years.
I don't know how that 2M in 2 hours is 'oddly low' but at that rate, Threads will surpass the entire Fediverse in less than 24 hours and will be centralizing the Fediverse when it turns on ActivityPub.
False. 2 billion people weren't using the internet 15 years ago. [0]
10 million users in 7 hours already surpasses that [1] Firefox statistic. The rapid growth of Threads is no joke.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-interne...
In 2011, Google+ had 10 million users two weeks after the launch.[14] In a month, it had 25 million.[15] In October 2011, the service had 40 million users, according to Larry Page.[16] At the end of 2011, Google+ had 90 million users.[17] In October 2013, approximately 540 million monthly active users used the social layer by interacting with Google+'s enhanced properties, such as Gmail, the +1 button, and YouTube comments.[18] Some 300 million monthly active users participated in the social network by interacting with the Google+ social-networking stream. According to ComScore, the biggest market was the United States followed by India.
It's DAU/MAU numbers and retention that make the bigger difference. ActivityPub has had pretty good retention since the early era of Mastodon - not gangbusters growth, but enough for people to feel comfortable with the ecosystem as it stands and uninfluenced by a large instance.
AP's "core experience" is more like a combo of Usenet, web forums and email than XMPP or Twitter - it can be aggregated and surveilled, but the social graph isn't solely in messaging and follower connections, it's in space-making and exclusivity. While individual users can be coerced into centralizing, spaces are a much harder nut and are why little PhpBB forums persist even now. You can have all the users but not the spaces, and if you don't play nice with the spaces, adios.
I suspect Facebook are, at this point, culturally incapable of allowing you to just see what you've set to follow. As in, that four-panel gag meme that ends with someone being thrown out a window incapable.
The "Musko-cringian" empire is an unbelievably ridiculous gift, here. Some of the timing couldn't be better.
Now, even with that backdrop, it's quite likely "Threads" (ugh, ... marketroids) won't take off like wildfire. But, I think we're at something of a fork here. Either this will be the competition current incarnation Twitter needs to start turning things around, or Threads will capitalize on each future misstep, service outage / problem, etc.
Threads has a sort of balanced position, in terms of marketing / uptake. Absolutely not the multi-faceted "cachet" of Bluesky Social, rather, the opposite ... arguably even "less cool" than Twitter (was) ... But, it also has the low friction user sign on you mention, part of an ecosystem incredibly widely used (a winning formula in America, especially, is convenience - about the best marketing available, itself), plenty of technical heft behind it, etc.
It could easily displace Twitter, and I think more quickly than many might argue.
Give them some slack. Twitter wasn't fully polished two hours after initial release. You need to give them some time to fine tune their algos and come up with new features. My bet is they will soon develop an explore page similar to Twitter's, and will give users options to tailor their home feed.
I think yours is a very critical take for a company that pushed out an MVP two hours ago.
Is there a mute feature like on Twitter? I use that all the time.
They haven’t even gotten to the “push” part yet and they’re now over 4 million users.
I don't have a social media account, unless you include here. I certainly edited my browser scripts so I don't see many of the what I consider obnoxious influencers.
Twitter has maybe six months but certainly not twelve before going bankrupt. It's done for. I fully agree with the analysis at https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/the-slow-sad-death-of-twitt...
It's not that I disagree with the speculation, but none of it is backed up. User stats as well as revenue are private. When you put out a strong statement like "revenue is collapsing" you deliver it as fact, whilst it's guess work.
I'd link to it but it's behind a paywall.
> [NOT AFFILIATED W/ THREADS BY INSTAGRAM] All in-one team communication platform
I bet they had a bump due to the name clash, and loads of support request too!
"Soon, you'll be able to follow and interact with people on other fediverse platforms, like Mastodon. They can also find people on Threads using full usernames, like @zuck@threads.net."
That seems to be a pretty strong commitment. If they pull this off and manage to bring the Fediverse into the mainstream and kill Twitter off in the process this is far from just a clone. Genuinely excited for this one.
I'm assuming, but hoping they're not following Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy.
Some taps take several seconds to complete or just fail without feedback. But I guess that’s just server load that will even out and be designed around.
Scrolling is not as fluid as either FB or IG, which is surprising given how much Meta invest in their feed. But better than most mastodon apps I’ve tried.
Interface is pretty minimal and pleasant. Navigation is very intuitive.
I like that I can import all my Instagram data but still keep it separate. I used Twitter and Instagram to primarily follow artists , and so the connection is nice.
I appreciate that they allow keeping it separate if needed.
I’m also interested to see what their fediverse integration will be like.
Feed content feels less chaotic than Twitter with more priority towards accounts I follow and less advertising noise. It feels like Twitter from a few years ago which is what I want.
Overall I am interested to see how this evolves. I’m not a fan of meta but I think this is right in their wheelhouse. I miss Twitter for the wealth of knowledge and culture that one could find on there if you curated your circles.(emphasis on curation). Elon ruined curation and I hope Threads does it better.
Agreed, but I don’t see any ads yet. Guessing they’re coming soon.
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-thr...
For a text-centric app, the lack of computer keyboard access is disheartening. I understand that the Threads team may want to focus on their core market on mobile. However, mobile prioritization will lead to posting content best composed on mobile, namely curt text and memes. I hope giving these types of content an early start won't affect the the culture on Threads in the long-run.
Instagram was like this for years, really. Which made some sense as it was a photo-taking app originally. But for something like this? Someone made some choices here, and I think they're the wrong ones.
I guess it says something that out of the thousands of comments I've seen about threads, I've only seen one or two that even noticed that there's no desktop/web site? Are people really that phone centric now? My poor old "elderly" Gen-X self doesn't get it.
Yes, you appear to be able to view individual threads if you have a link, but not sign up to the product, author threads, or browse?
(I don’t like Twitter as a medium for long posts like this, but the bottom line doesn’t care what I like.)
Facebook filled our lives with rage-bait. (Not even going to touch the elections manip)
They took over instagram and removed the time based sorting with their algorithm.
So fool me once, shame on you. Fool me, you can't get fooled again.
We have to be reaching oversaturation in this space. I really wonder if all these projects are misjudging the appetite for a Twitter replacement.
And no, if I am out and about I am not going be surfing on my phone.
Not sure why people aren't making a bigger deal about this. Acres of content were removed from the public web overnight, and people (like journalists) who still treat this like it's some sort of public service seem clueless to this.
Rate limiting is minor compared to that.
More and more accounts are getting off the twitter bandwagon. Clearly it has an impact on users to keep losing features, being asked to pay and now being limited in how many tweets they can read per day. How’s that an improvement for the normal user?
By the way - what is a pro-Musk activist? Someone who corrects false statements on the internet?
Wait until you realize billions of people still use Facebook and Instagram daily.
Click on that and you have just your followers, no adverts and it’s time-based.
[0] https://www.androidpolice.com/2016/11/29/google-allo-hit-5-m...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/over-2-million-signups-2-hou...
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/6/23785630/instagrams-thread...
We got 8 million downloads (not updates, full downloads) in one day back in the desktop era when there were only a couple billion people online in total.
This feels pretty weak to me. I wonder if that's intentional, get the enthusiasts on first, for free, as it were, then turn on the firehose later on to get the "olds" over from FB and the "influencers" over from Insta?
I agree that 2M "signups" is not actually impressive, but I'm not sure where you're getting the figure of 3-4 billion DAUs for Instagram. Everything I'm seeing is significantly lower than that.
Is there any way to use this without the app?
The list of people you follow is also different (important).
If Firefox strict mode blocks something, I generally accept that as a net good thing.
With all the privacy invasive things that Threads tracks people with on its app, this is still proof that network effects trump privacy any day when it comes to social networks.
Privacy as a feature that Mastodon touts is simply and clearly not enough to sway normal users to use it, after many Twitter fuck ups by Elon and over 6 years of Mastodon's existence.
According to https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount there are about 13m mastodon accounts across all instances.
Threads might pass this by the time I wake up.
Traditionally they don't need to care about showing you good content to keep you interested, you're generally logging in anyway.
The proof is in the pudding: if you want a curated feed go to Tumblr or Mastodon. These spaces exist yet they're significantly less mainstream.
Why would we ignore the very mainstream Instagram as an example?
> you're generally logging in anyway.
When an app is established, sure. But providing new users a shitty experience in order to prioritise revenue is how new social networks fail.
In Threads's case, there's some luck with Elon burning Twitter down, but atleast this launch is intentional.
Personally, I don’t see any value in debating it.
Here’s a classic article explaining why Apple opening retail stores will never work.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2001-05-20/commentar...
My advice: Skip the worthless debate.
> Instantly see a list of posts from celebrity accounts that I don't follow
> Close the app
As it is, I don’t see how Threads will survive in the long run, considering how Instagram users are the sort of people who have short attention spans unless their apps dazzle them with something animated or with video in it.
Unrelated: Poor bastards: https://threads.com/
Overnight eclipsed. I think they'll rebrand, like Clubhouse rebranded to Shortcut because of the Clubhouse voicechat app rise in popularity.
The website seems to be crumbling a bit, everything redirects to get the app. Hope they can scale up a few instances so browsing returns.
I figured I'd maybe take a look, but I won't install on my phone anyways. And I barely use my phone. So that's that.
The problem with videos (compare to blog writing) is i can't just fast read the whole content first. I need to second by second go to it.
And due to current target of Threads same as Tiktoker (instagram user = tiktok user) ? I can't use it, too.
But for entertaining purpose, short videos is fine.
seeing that freaks face made me physically shudder. If they were smart they would distance this product from him as much as possible. it should be painfully obvious that he is toxic for this and any brand.
pay him whatever, let him stay in charge, but please for the love of god STOP PUTTING him as the face of anything.
Twitter has verification which is "anyone with spare change who wants to shout louder than others".
Now it just means someone paid some amount of money. They're "verified" in the sense of like verifying the email address you used to sign up with to an olde timey web forum, and maybe that you're probably not an absolutely minimum effort spam/scam bot. However the "verified" checkmark is still basically useless because it doesn't verify an identity or credentials anymore, and it's easy enough for bad actors to get the checkmark to then impersonate some brand or website or whatever, and have their posts get privileged by The Algorithm.
So, previously "verified" status was useful for people to be able to tell that the posts they're reading are really from who they think they're from. Now, "verified" status means that bad actors and bad posters get their posts boosted ahead of normal posts, so the replies to any mildly popular thread are going to be full of attempted scams and tepid takes. It's become completely useless for its original purpose and makes content discovery worse.
Depends on what you mean by "meaningful". Threads uses Instagram's verification, which, like Twitter's, is now pay-to-play[0].
[0] https://about.fb.com/news/2023/02/testing-meta-verified-to-h...
• Notable: Your account must represent a well-known, highly searched for person, brand or entity. We review accounts that are featured in multiple news sources, and we don't consider paid or sponsored media content as sources for review.
Come to think of it, Meta is building the everything app. They have all the components. I think Elon won’t have any success with his X / everything app.
What was wrong with mastadon?
It doesn't make Meta any money. Can't you see how wrong that is?
Btw, it's just Instagram without the photos.
Threads is wildly feature-incomplete, but there's so much demand for a twitter alternative that this is an embarrassingly one-sided product fight. For a 0.0.1-alpha version to steamroll into the space like this, it's now just a matter of the long goodbye for twitter as it becomes a space where you go to find someone's Threads handle.
I give it 24 hours, tops, until it eclipses the entire Fediverse, and Bluesky becomes an obscure historical footnote.
Yeah, no.
YouTube constantly harassed you to convert your account to be a Google+ account, and there was a point where commenting on any YouTube video would automatically make a post on Google+, as if you shared the video with that comment as a caption. They're totally not comparable.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/06/threads...
I’ve never understood the complaints about hate speech or content, since you choose who to follow, can mute phrases, people, retweets, etc. I think community notes is probably the best anti-disinformation/fact check feature of any platform.
I don’t agree with everything they’ve done, but Musk clearly has made a better effort on product than any of the previous management.
I miss the era when the internet was just broadband desktop users, with none of the people who exclusively access it via smartphone.
I got put in Facebook jail for a month for posting an "indecent photo" which was just a picture of my son at the beach in his bathing suit that some algorithm misidentified... when I appealed, they punished me even harder; but when I report actual neo-NAZI content, death threats, disturbing content, illegal sales on marketplace... reports rejected.
I miss the fantasy we had about the web in 90s. How naive we were.