DAU is a very one-dimensional and misleading KPI, one that gave us ever-growing, VC-backed unprofitable companies. The Threads is definitely net-negative in the sense of wider impact and not just single-dimensional KPIs. Take as example Uber and AirBnB. Both have had millions of active users and one could argue their service is even useful to a lot of people. It's still quite easy to argue that they are are net-negative, because even by the narrow metric of revenue and profitability, they are not even returning value to their shareholders - they turn a profitable quarter like what, every few years or so? The effects on society such as traffic congestion, real-estate market etc. are also quite visible in many major cities in the western hemisphere these days (and beyond even...). Now specifically for the Threads: as it stands right now, they are not even driving revenue at Meta, in the corpo-speak of their own CFO: “Specifically, as it pertains to monetization, we don’t expect Threads to be a meaningful driver of 2025 revenue at this time,” said CFO Susan Li on the earnings call. “We’ve been just pleased with the growth trajectory and again, are really focused on introducing features that the community finds valuable.” (
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/31/metas-threads-app-now-has-27...). As for the wider positive effects to the society at large, feel free to point out any. As far as I recall, they launched with the promise of sort of "sanitised" contents being promoted, kind of Pinterest 2.0 if you will, beyond that I am not aware of anything relevant coming out of that platform honestly.