Threads attracts 30M users in 24 hours despite design flaws, privacy concerns | Ars Technica

100% this. For everyone that takes their online privacy and freedom very seriously, there are literal millions of others who couldn't give less of a fuck and proudly parrot the "if you have nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about" bullshit, like they're some enlightened cunt atop their own tower who conveniently ignores the consequences of every company that experiences a major data breach.

These people are the reason the internet has devolved as hard as it has, and it makes me sick to know there's nothing that can be done to stop things from only getting worse - the masses enable the surveillance capitalist machine, and what's worse is that they've become convinced they need it to survive. Meta pushing their fucking nose into places it isn't welcome, like the fediverse, just further proved it to me. These big tech firms will not stop until they own a piece of every free region of the internet, and they know that no matter how vocal their opponents are, that the lobotomized fuckwits that make up the bulk of their userbase will just lap up anything they put out.

Social media was a fucking huge mistake.

... What do you think despite means?

They're already on Insta, so they're really not giving up anything extra

Bacon sandwiches are fine as long as it’s not ultra processed bread and stuff. Embrace the bacon. Zuck the zuck.

Sexuality and union membership? FUCK THAT.

I'm more disgusted and disappointed with humanity than surprised.

There's been a lot of discussion on here lately about the flaws of federated social media, but you know what the biggest one is? No marketing to point out to all these dipshits that there's more to the Internet than Zuckerberg's bullshit.

It doesn't seem surprising to me at all that <3% of Instagram's monthly active users (or <6% of their daily active users) were curious enough to go through just a couple of clicks to see what it was about.

Is it really so surprising? They have the entire Instagram userbase to feed off of. All the Instagram users have to do is open Threads and they are already a user. The userbase was already there, Meta just had to activate it.

I think for this same reason Threads probably will stick around. Especially with the way Twitter is going. Can't say I'll be joining in on the fun though

That Meta swooped in right when Twitter were at their lowest point? I feel like this isn't very surprising. I also think that this isn't actually going to be the revolutionary platform some people are making out it will be.

People who use Twitter have been desperate for an alternative. Surprised it took one of the big corps this long to throw their hat in the ring, tbh.

Maybe. I think there’s a lot of dislike towards Elon out there, people are just looking for an alternative to Twitter. The recent surge in popularity for threads is just proof of that.

You could say that about Facebook and yet it trundles on.

Threads will be relevant because Meta has the money to keep making it relevant.

Meta VR would have died by any other company, but Meta VR will stick around for quite a while because Zuckerberg money.

Unless Twitter completely turns things around (spoiler, they won't) I expect Threads will slowly grow over the next several months; both in users and features.

At the moment Threads isn't ready (from a functionality standpoint) to absorb Twitter, but it will be the more time they have.

From a Mastodon/Fediverse standpoint the sooner Twitter falls over, the better. (Assuming it's ready to scale and take on users, I think probably, but who knows.)

In short unless something dramatic happens I expect Threads (for better or worse) will be around for a long time.

I made a few comments on various news sites (and techie news sites too), and the overwhelming response was basically they were happy to choose the lesser of two evils. And the fact that Threads is working while Twitter is in shambles.

No wonder the open Internet is fucked.

I think its as simple as people as a group tend to have short memory. Right now Musk = bad, so they run to Zucc despite knowing he's just as bad maybe worse. They want to feel like they're doing something. Seriously if you're evil all you gotta do is stay quiet for long enough to come back into the spotlight.

It is peanuts to Meta but not to others like Masterdon and the Fediverse. It's also enough of a message to the likes of Twitter to be seen as a threat.

It goes to show how monopolized the social converse is these days online.

Well, Threads has an estimated 30+ million users already. Threads will easily have more daily active users than the entirety of the Fediverse if even just 1% stick around.

Threads would have 150% the number of users in that case, and that’s assuming the app stops growing.

I’ve gotten a good amount of pushback (well reasoned, but pushback nonetheless) about my position on how we need to think of where we fit into all of this. But realistically we are tiny. ActivityPub—if it ever comes to Threads—can be easily bastardized and made proprietary by Meta unilaterally.

We’ve seen it more times than we can even remember. Microsoft did it with IE, Google is doing it with Chrome and RCS (for those who haven’t seen my other comments: no, Android RCS is not an open standard. Google closed it with proprietary layers which is why no other messaging apps are allowed to access Google’s RCS save for a few like Samsung), and even Mastodon.

That’s right: Mastodon has not adapted ActivityPub fully to standard and instead opts to go it’s own way. And now other projects are hiving off and—you guessed it—implemented Mastodon’s approach rather than the official ActivityPub standard.

At least according to ActivityPub co-creator Evan Prodromou (on the Changelog podcast episode “Into the Fediverse” on 2023-02-24 around the 10 minute mark). He isn’t putting down Mastodon at all; but it stands to show just how easily a single big player can hijack things. We got lucky that Mastodon didn’t radically pivot and integrate hostile practices.

But Meta will. We all know this. This is what capitalists do. They gain nothing by allowing competition, even if minor.

Edit: in case I wasn’t clear, I’m not attacking Mastodon. I love Mastodon. I don’t love the NDA that the creator signed with Meta. I don’t like his stances regarding Meta. I understand things do need to deviate at points, as is the nature of all software. I’m a software engineer myself (albeit not for anything related to ActivityPub or social media). It is more an example of how quickly things can go sideways with just one big player willing it into existence.

There's a difference between the Fediverse exposing and federating your posts and likes, and Facebook's aggressive harvesting of engagement data, device metrics, location, etc. With federation, they can only get a fraction of a fraction of the data they usually get.

Threads is powered by Instagram, so right now it's just one account, but we're looking into a way to delete your Threads account separately.

Maybe I have really poor reading comprehension, but this does seem to imply that your threads account IS your instagram account

You use an Instagram account to register a Threads account, but they are two different services. After the Threads account is linked, there is however no way to remove that account without also removing the Instagram account.

Just for comparison, there are something like 2.3 BILLION Instagram accounts.

I'm guessing it's a poorly worded way to say that Threads will reach 1 billion users before Twitter. Otherwise, I don't know. Facebook has almost 3 billion users.