Downloading Meta’s new app to test the truth of internet conspiracies
Photo by Azamat E. via Unsplash.
Following Twitter changing its name to “X” and imposing strict rules which seemingly instigated a new app by Meta, general questions are: what is “Threads,” and why should anybody care? In an attempt to find out, I downloaded Threads myself to see if this rookie in the ring has the potential to knock out its digital competitors.
On July 1, Elon Musk announced Twitter will limit how many posts users can view in a day, and there was significant backlash. Conveniently, Threads launched five days later. This tipped people off that Threads is likely intended to compete with Twitter. Threads is also marketed as pioneering cross-social-media interaction. It’s planned to work in tandem with a program called “ActivityPub.” This will blend the lines between platforms so internet communication is faster, more efficient, and more wide-reaching. However, the two apps are not compatible yet.
When I downloaded Threads, my Instagram username and account information carried over. While you can customize your account, it’s essentially an extension of your Instagram account minus your followers.
Users can post photos or videos paired with a caption, or a classic text post like on Twitter. The formatting of the app is Twitter-esque, but most posts are captioned photos like on Instagram. People use the app like Instagram “spam accounts” — for casual content that’s not fitting for their main profiles. There’s an abundance of brands, celebrity figures, Twitter-style memes, political rants, and fanpages. Corporate accounts’ posts mirror their Instagram content.
At first, I was satisfied that internet jokes about a presumed older demographic who wouldn’t know how to act in a barren social media landscape seemed to be true. Comments on the first posts I viewed were hilariously outdated — they used capitalized full sentences, an abundance of emojis that were popular in 2010, and even massive Apple Memojis.
However, this theory came to be debunked. As I spent more time on Threads, I noticed uncapitalization, Gen Z lingo, and jokes that didn’t feel recycled. I was, however, caught off guard by the rage towards Twitter/X from previous users. Even Zuck himself wrote a string of posts roasting Elon Musk for backing out of an invitation to physically fight him.
As I scrolled through these posts, I struggled to create an unbiased opinion because of the app’s ridiculously fast algorithm. I was curious if my interests would be woven into my feed after a while, but I was shocked that after liking one post about Taylor Swift, I received three more posts about her just two minutes later. Between my interests in activism and music, my open explore page intensely divided into the demographics of aggressively left-wing American grandma, and teenager with a parasocial relationship with Taylor Swift. On my first day, one of the first five posts I saw was about Taylor, three out of five on day two, and all five on my third day.
After exploring internet rumours that Threads quietly steals user data within small print in its terms and conditions, I was surprised to find that the app is not secretive about its data collection. Among common permissions, Threads can access your job history, performance evaluations, and recordings of a user’s environment. If that wasn’t creepy enough, Threads has access to location, search history, health data, and “sensitive information.” The only thing the internet had wrong is that Threads is unique in this. If you thought you were safe from Threads’ invasive data collection because you’re sticking to Instagram, remember that, as Meta apps, they share the same disclaimers.
Internet PSAs that you can’t delete Threads without deleting the linked Instagram account proved to be helpful, as Threads posters themselves are complaining about this omission of a necessary feature. The only current solution is to assume a private, or “hidden” account.
In summary, I’ve gathered that Threads by Meta is a weird combination of Twitter and Instagram. It’s defined by the internet as a copycat of Twitter which steals your data and only hosts out-of-touch older users, but only half of that turned out to be true! It’s difficult to predict whether Threads will succeed because the proposed importance to a cross-social-media breakthrough has not been tapped yet. I will be deleting the app as most content overlaps with Instagram. After two months, Threads currently has 125 million users which, compared to Twitter’s 330 million users after 17 years, is impressive. However, compared to Instagram (2.35 billion) and TikTok (1 billion), it still has a long way to go to be the shiniest new thing in the App Store.
