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Comment by nicpottier | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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?

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