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Comment by Karrot_Kream | Hacker News Reader

HN is downright quiet on the topic, with only 21 posts over 20 comments since the launch (2023-07-05), 4 posts per day. Compare that to the Reddit blackout posts which seem to be closer to 8 posts per day. Only 8 posts with over 100 comments, whereas it's hard to find even a single Reddit blackout post at less than 100 comments. My friends in every other community are buzzing about Threads, but here on HN someone comes into every thread to remind me that Mastodon doesn't need growth to be a success, whether the thread was about Mastodon or not.

Just gives me more of that feeling that the community here is becoming more detached. Maybe it's just me, but I'm watching The Great Fragmentation with open eyes to see what comes next.

View on HN

Maybe it's because HN is more like Reddit than Twitter/Threads, so there's more reasons to care about it. And a lot of Redditors probably came to talk about it here, some because their favorite subreddit was on strike.

Also the Reddit situation was very dramatic and adversarial, Threads is just a new boring product with a clean launch.

I think it's more that the HN crowd cannot stand to think, much less utter the phrase "you've gotta hand it to Mark Zuckerberg and crew." That's at least the feeling I have to get over when I praise Threads.

I think it's important to remember that virality can be fickle and Threads may go the way of Clubhouse. We really don't know where it'll land up. Among Us was the hit game of the pandemic and now it's not.

But maybe the crowd here should be a bit more humble and restrained by their biases, it's a useful art to practice. When I first saw YouTube in late 2005 I told all my friends that it would go nowhere because Flash was a resource intensive, proprietary technology. Now I pay for YouTube Premium.

That wouldn't be an interesting take or conversation and is sort of against the HN vibe.

Not to say that doesn't happen all the time, but agree with GP; they did a thing meh. Will seen if it gets traction over Twitter and then that will be interesting.

Why would you say that? No one should be surprised or really even impressed that Meta could make Threads even as fast as they did. They've already made this kind of app several times.

The portion on HN users that are happy Facebook users would be interesting to know.

My perception is that a lot here have accounts (though less than the portion of society at large), but few use them much.

Not sure how to get actual data on this though.

there's always just asking people, with the obvious bias that'll have, but the numbers would still be interesting.

HN supports poll posts

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29755614

I don’t think it’s that. There’s just no need for a Twitter clone without porn.

Although they did do a very good job. The app is well thought out and the service has been rock solid since launch.

Honestly there's no need for a Twitter with porn. It's not like there's any lack of options for publishing or viewing porn on the internet.

Of course if Twitter wants to host porn more power to 'em, it's just not a make or break differentiator. I have a feeling in a year or two people will assume that if you're still on Twitter, it's for the porn, with the plausible deniability of "no man, it's for the free speech!"

> I praise Threads.

Can't praise a thing I can't access,

Yours truly,

- EU citizen

P.S no web interface in 2023?

It is a bit weird.

I've been toying with all the various Twitter alternatives as they have had their 5 minutes of fame and Threads definitely feels different and like it might stick.

That feels like very big news but not to HN I guess?

I think over time HN has become more like a lot of other tech communities; a bit ideological, zealous, and detached. Most of these groups have ingroups (the virtuous hackers) and outgroups (CIA, NSA, RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, Big Tech, Social Media, techbros, billionaires, <zeitgeist enemy>.) This is the kind of community you'll find in a lot of FSF mailing lists, Libera (formerly Freenode) channels, and Linux subreddits. Threads, being a Meta project, is an outgroup project, so not worth talking about no matter how many use it. The other Twitter alternatives align more with the ingroup so worth boosting beyond their actual usage. It depends on what you want out of a community, some people want a space that is a bit relaxed and others want something a bit more cliquish. The FSF orbit communities have always been on the cliquish side.

For me if I wanted something more zealous I'd spend more time on Libera channels or FSF MLs. The few I do spend time in satisfy my fill of that culture.

My less cynical viewpoint is that it just isn't that interesting.

It's a bare-bones Twitter clone made by Meta. There's no interesting new technology to discuss, no open source angle, no discussion on the company founder that hasn't been done 100 times.

HN has plenty of discussions about interesting Meta projects - Quest, React, the metaverse, financial discussions, etc. I just don't think there's much to grip people on this topic.

Hasn't Threads been around for awhile? I thought I ran across it when browsing Facebook's store page on one of the app stores and saw it a long time ago.

Regardless I do think its funny that Facebook had photos but Instagram is still a product and now Facebook has always had status updates and now Threads is a product. Facebook is almost just a mashup of Instagram + Threads. Or in a way some demographic of users liked a Facebook experience but for photos only (Instagram) and another set of users liked a Facebook experience but for status updates only (Threads).

Threads used to be some kind of messaging app and was shut down. They revived the name for this new project for some reason

Nobody has covered the interesting angle -- this is the first time I've seen social media companies launch direct competitors, rather than a novel way to capture attention.

At least, the first time in a while

Facebook/Instagram Reels is a TikTok clone to directly compete in that space.

YouTube Shorts also exists to compete with TikTok.

Yeah, and even TikTok itself has done this. There was this flash in the pan social media app that was popular for like 2-3 months at some point in the past year (I forget when) called BeReal and TikTok added an exact clone of the functionality.

They've been stealing features from the competition for years. Snapchat was really novel when it came out, then the others created effectively the same UX. Clubhouse was a novel take as well, then Twitter added a clone of it right into the main app.

I can't actually think of the last time one of the existing networks launched a new app to compete rather than just stealing UX features, that is a new one to me for sure!

They have all been doing this from the start.

I can offer some simpler alternative explanations, though it's possible that it could be a combination of these things.

* This is anecdotal, but I quit using Twitter in 2016, so the "downfall" of it doesn't impact me much and I am not looking for a replacement. News about all of this is mildly interesting, but I have no personal investment in the outcome really.

* One of the things that Twitter did in the past couple weeks that they took a lot of heat for was that they gated viewing tweets to having an account. But Instagram and Facebook have been gated like this for a while now.

For example, try this link in a private browser window: https://www.instagram.com/cristiano/

You can view thumbnails of the 9 latest posts, but trying to click into the detail view on them gives you a login gate. Trying to do pretty much anything opens a login modal.

So why are we zealous and ideological for not being excited that the product that seems likely to replace it is coming from a company that does the same exact things that people are upset about?

As the poster above said, the hype may not be organic, so I wouldn’t expect communities to be talking about threads. The media might be all the source of the hype.

Threads was on the front page for an entire day or two. A sizable percentage of the entire lifetime of the App.

Twitter and Musks other ill-adventures will continue to dominate HN though. Zuckerberg is not part of the HN in-crowd and will draw about as much water as his other services.

Plain simply I think it is not that interesting of a topic to talk.

There isn't much to say.

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