Meta's Threads - News and Commentary

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Threads Won’t Promote Political Or Hard News Content — A Contrast From Twitter​

Instagram lead Adam Mosseri said in two Threads posts Friday that the new app would not encourage “politics and hard news” on its platform, a far cry from the promoted political content found on its rival platform Twitter.



CRUCIAL QUOTE

“The goal isn't to replace Twitter,” Mosseri said. “The goal is to create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less angry place for conversations, but not all of Twitter.”

KEY BACKGROUND

The choice for Threads to steer clear of news and politics on its platform is likely informed by troubles Facebook had before it reduced such content in 2021. A study found that in 2020, during the lead-up to the presidential election, Facebook spread fake news faster than any other social websites. A separate 2021 study concluded the website could have prevented more than 10 billion views on popular pages that posted misinformation on Facebook prior to the election. By early 2021, the social media site changed its algorithm to lessen the amount of political content in users’ feeds. The platform has since maintained a stark contrast to Twitter, which after its $44 billion purchase at the hands of Musk, has encouraged political content. Musk, who stays active on the app, has encouraged politicians to engage with him on Twitter Spaces—allowing Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fl) to launch his presidential campaign using the live audio feature. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson also uses Twitter as his platform to upload episodes of his independent commentary show. On Carlson’s first episode of the show, he said he and his team were “grateful” to be on Twitter and were told there were no “gatekeepers” on the platform.

 

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Surprise!: Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Sanely Run’ Twitter Clone ‘Threads’ Collects All Your Data​

Screenshots of the app, which is available for pre-download on the App Store, shows it will collect data on users’ health & fitness, financial information, contact information, user content, browsing history, usage data, diagnostics, purchases, location, contacts, search history, identifiers, sensitive info, and more.

Many other apps, including Twitter, collect data on their users, but Facebook (along with Google) is particularly notorious for it. The tech giant recently settled a class-action data privacy lawsuit in the U.S. for $725 million, and has been condemned by both Democrat and Republican lawmakers for the way it has handled user data in the past.


https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1676024766744936448

 

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Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter Clone Threads Suffers Drop in Engagement After Initial Surge at Launch​

Anthony Bartolacci, managing director at Sensor Tower, noted the initial success of Threads, stating, “The Threads launch really did ‘break the internet.” Bartolacci stated: “In the 10-plus years Sensor Tower has been estimating app installs, the first 72 hours of Threads was truly in a class by itself.” However, Bartolacci also pointed out that recent data suggests a significant pullback in user engagement since Threads’ launch. Tuesday and Wednesday saw a 20 percent decrease in daily active users compared to Saturday, and a 50 percent decrease in user time spent, from 20 minutes to 10 minutes.

Similarweb’s data echoed these findings, showing a dropoff of more than 25 percent in daily active users between its July 7 peak and Monday for Threads users on Android phones worldwide. The average amount of time U.S. users spent on the app also dropped from about 20 minutes on July 6 to just over eight minutes on July 10. David Carr, senior insights manager at Similarweb, said, “While there was intense interest in checking out the app initially, not every user has made a habit of visiting Threads as often as they might other social apps.”

Despite the drop in engagement, Facebook remains optimistic about the future of Threads. A spokesperson for the company said, “While it’s early days, we’re excited about the initial success of Threads, which has surpassed our expectations. We launched the app just over a week ago, and our focus now is on ensuring stable performance, delivering new features and continuing to improve the experience in the coming months.”

 

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Most of the 100 million people who signed up for Threads stopped using it​

Although losing over half of the initial users in a short period might sound discouraging, the Reuters article said Zuckerberg told employees that user retention was better than Meta executives expected. "Zuckerberg said he considered the drop-off 'normal' and expected retention to grow as the company adds more features to the app, including a desktop version and search functionality," Reuters wrote.

Chief Product Officer Chris Cox also spoke at the company event, reportedly saying that Meta is considering "retention-driving hooks" such as "making sure people who are on the Instagram app can see important Threads." Threads is part of Meta's Instagram platform, so users can create a Threads profile as part of their Instagram account.

Zuck: Threads still needs “basic functionality”​

When contacted by Ars today, a Meta spokesperson pointed to Zuckerberg's comments from Wednesday's earnings call. Zuckerberg said:

On Threads, briefly, I'm quite optimistic about our trajectory. We saw unprecedented growth out of the gate and more importantly we're seeing more people coming back daily than I'd expected. And now, we're focused on retention and improving the basics. And then after that, we'll focus on growing the community to the scale we think is possible. Only after that will we work on monetization. We've run this playbook many times before—with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Stories, Reels, and more—and this is as good of a start as we could have hoped for, so I'm really happy with the path we're on here.

Zuckerberg also told investors that "Threads has been dramatically more than we expected in terms of the adoption and the rate of that... we had a small team working on [it] for a while, but it really kind of blew up and created a big opportunity immediately."

 

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Threads is dead - can AI chatbots save Meta's Twitter clone?​

The attempt to give various chatbots different temperaments and personalities seems like a similar attempt at a ‘social’ AI chatbot seen in Snapchat’s ‘My AI’ earlier this year, which created some mild buzz but quickly faded into irrelevance.

According to the report, Meta is even exploring a chatbot that speaks like Abraham Lincoln, as well as one that will dish out travel advice in the verbal style of a surfer. These new tools are poised to provide new search functions and offer recommendations, similar to the ways in which the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT is used.

It’s possible - likely, even - that this new string of AI chatbots is an attempt to remain relevant, as the company may be focused on maintaining attention since Threads lost more than half its user base only a couple of weeks after launching in early July. Meta’s long-running ‘metaverse’ project also appears to have failed to garner enough interest, with the company switching focus to AI as its primary area of investment back in March.

Regardless, we’ll soon be treated to even more AI-boosted chatbots. Oh, joy.

 

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Surprise!: Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Sanely Run’ Twitter Clone ‘Threads’ Collects All Your Data​

Screenshots of the app, which is available for pre-download on the App Store, shows it will collect data on users’ health & fitness, financial information, contact information, user content, browsing history, usage data, diagnostics, purchases, location, contacts, search history, identifiers, sensitive info, and more.

Many other apps, including Twitter, collect data on their users, but Facebook (along with Google) is particularly notorious for it. The tech giant recently settled a class-action data privacy lawsuit in the U.S. for $725 million, and has been condemned by both Democrat and Republican lawmakers for the way it has handled user data in the past.


https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1676024766744936448

 

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