Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has lobbed a challenge at beleaguered Twitter boss Elon Musk that is far more significant and threatening than their recent, ridiculous, cage fight banter.
Meta’s new Twitter-challenger, Threads, clocked more than 30 million sign-ups in its first seven hours this week, an extraordinary number and one reflective of a daunting advantage for Zuckerberg. Threads offers a low bar for entry and doesn’t leave new members floundering to find friends – an off-putting hassle with other platforms – because an Instagram account is required to set up one on Threads, and Instagram already has an estimated 1.6 billion users.
So, Threaders gain an instant network from any of their Instagram connections who also join, and recommendations linked to their existing social media life populates their timelines. Thus, it offers the easiest migration yet on offer away from Twitter, where Musk seems bent on increasingly alienating users and advertisers.
However, Threads will not provide a social media oasis. While a top Meta executive promised employees it would be “sanely run”, Threads is still, like Instagram, a property owned and run by Meta, which remains mired in controversy over its treatment of sensitive areas, such as the image struggles of teen girls. And like Facebook and Instagram, Threads will collect an enormous amount of personal data, a reminder that users aren’t really moving to a fresh alternative.
John McManus: Trump’s trade wars can push the UK closer to Europe
Kathy Sheridan: The public may not care who gets to speak in the Dáil, but they do care about being taken for fools
Celebrity Bear Hunt review: from Una Healy’s ‘nightmares’ to Bear Grylls’s apex predator, this is unhinged cruel comedy at its finest
Limerick’s Tom Morrissey returns from the Inca trail to take the high road to Croke Park
Meta has decided to delay, and perhaps even avoid, launching Threads in the EU, reflecting corporate uncertainty about basic EU compliance that should raise a data privacy red flag for new Threads users. Meta, remember, has faced big fines from the European Commission and the Irish Data Protection Commissioner for several large scale data protection and privacy violations.
Meta’s decision to opt out of an EU launch suggests Threads cannot be structured to comply with data protection regulations here – which may ultimately prove a blessing in disguise for Europeans.
