Threads attracts 30M users in 24 hours despite design flaws, privacy concerns | Ars Technica
Threads attracts 30M users in 24 hours despite design flaws, privacy concerns
'Despite' seems out of place here. Those 30M users didn't sign up 'despite' the flaws, they give no fucks about how flawed their social media is.
Like me saying I eat bacon sandwiches despite the health consequences.
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.
Not to sound like a naïve, brain dead optimist but maybe this is our chance to draw our line in the sand. If Threads falls on its face, it will likely serve as precedence for other companies who think they can use the fediverse for their own gain, no?
As Louis Rossmann says, "never go to war with the internet because you will lose". I'd like to think that the people who make that quote possible are all migrating or have migrated to the fediverse.
... What do you think despite means?
I think it’s a name for a type of old, old, wooden ship
despite not knowing what it means, in this context, it means whatever affords me the chance to nitpick. in essence, despite lacking any authority to make such a decision, and the absence of any motivation to the contrary, i define words how i like. the result is that, despite my efforts, my arguments are incoherent. however, in lieu of better alternatives, despite, which heretofore had usually be defined such that it always was in reference to spiting a particular thing.
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.
people seem to be in a big need of something different than Twitter.
and also the FB/Instagram users are likely not to hesitate to join one more Meta app that preys on their privacy.
Cuz he's loco in the cabeza.
Now you can't even read Tweets without an account.
Why would you even want to look at it at this point? It's Nazis all the way down now.
It's because Musk sniffs his own farts and has bullshitted his way into more and more money his entire life. He wanted to morph Twitter into the platform he wanted, but also tried to make it net a profit, by 1) fucking over people/companies to whom he owed money, and 2) trying to squeeze money out of users who had used the platform for free for over a decade.
He's one of those asshole kids who start bum fights, but he's trying to get the bums to pay him for participating and he's not paying out to the bettors who won.
Now you can’t even read Tweets without having an account.
They did walk that back, at least.
That is utterly crazy. I was not expecting this.
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.
They were already on Instagram lol h they don’t really care about the privacy issues
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.
The thing is that it doesn’t need to be. I just needs to be ever so slightly better then twitter.
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.
Data collected by Threads can include users' sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, biometric data, trade union membership, pregnancy status, politics, and religious beliefs. Threads can also collect data on users' employment, as well as health and fitness. Beyond that, the app also can collect data monitoring users' location and other web activity.
Geez meta, do you want the results of my colonoscopy too? (spoiler: they do)
"Health and financial data, precise location, search history, browsing history, and more are not needed for a user to be on the app and are instead used to create a more hyper-personalized and targeted experience on the app or shared with and sold to advertisers," Schroeder told Ars.
Fuck targeted experiences, all my homies hate targeted experiences
Sexuality and union membership? FUCK THAT.
I’ll be shocked if Threads is relevant within two months.
Maybe. I think there’s a lot of dislike towards Elon, 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.
Design flaws compared to what? The flaming piece of shit that is Twitter right now?
I get that it isn't Mastodon, but it is amazing what you can do when you can mobilize an existing app to gain users for another one.
Heard some people at work talking about it with such excitement and zeal. It really does baffle me how little people care about privacy as long as they get their fix of social media entertainment. It's a little depressing, and I can only hope that Threads don't ruin the Fediverse in the future.
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.
The question here is: how many users should we expect Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, with all the cash hoard of Meta behind it, to be able to get together for a new app?
30 mil sounds like peanuts in that context. Aren’t there like a billion people on Meta’s properties?
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.
If you're already accepting of Facebook, design flaws, and privacy concerns aren't going to sway you from "The new thing".
Instagram users with FOMO syndrome.
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.
I’m more interested in seeing the daily users in like a month or so. Tons of folks I know, including myself, are checking it out just bc it’s brand new. Personally, I’ve seen enough and it’s pretty garbo, and I’m guessing a lot of people will do the same.
Folks will drop it because it’s cringe before they drop it for anything privacy related.
I REALLY don't understand the appeal of Threads it's basically Instagram but with a new interface. Maybe I haven't looked too much into it myself since its still really new. But all those 30 Million people definitely only joined it because of name recognition and nothing else.
But how many will be active in four to five months from now?
Did I misread that all facebook/instagram users will have a Threads account by default?
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
That's what I was afraid of
they are linked if you have an insta, or you can just make a threads account like some of my friends did. But you Dont have one by default, you still have to give your consent to sign up for it.
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 know that Meta is awful for privacy, but being on Lemmy/Mastodon is not exactly private either. Everything you do on here is as public to Meta as Threads is. They can easily pull any data and metrics they'd like from the fediverse, even if instances defederate from them. There are plenty of other reasons to not like Threads but picking Threads over Mastodon because of privacy isn't exactly changing that situation.
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.
What is meant by:
In a Threads post, Zuckerberg took a light jab at Twitter while optimistically predicting that Threads could become the first online public square that attracts a billion users
Doesn’t Facebook already have more than 1 billion users?
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.
Uhg. Cannibalizing the bird app for something equally obnoxious. These corporations are playing us for Suckers ....
Not really that crazy since Instagram has over 2 billion active users month. 30 million is less than 2% of that.
An interesting development to be sure, wonder how it's going to play out in a month or two down the track
@Kovu. Your average person will go oooh Instagram, I know them. Sign me up for the new app! Privacy, security, etc never even were involved. Of course that also assumes Meta didn't just "create" one for each IG user (no clue what the usercount is).
I mean... It's mostly Instagram users. It's not like they had much more to lose from it.
Data collected by Threads can include users' sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, biometric data, trade union membership, pregnancy status, politics, and religious beliefs. Threads can also collect data on users' employment, as well as health and fitness. Beyond that, the app also can collect data monitoring users' location and other web activity.
Geez meta, do you want the results of my colonoscopy too? (spoiler: they do)
"Health and financial data, precise location, search history, browsing history, and more are not needed for a user to be on the app and are instead used to create a more hyper-personalized and targeted experience on the app or shared with and sold to advertisers," Schroeder told Ars.
Fuck targeted experiences, all my homies hate targeted experiences
I’m more interested in seeing the daily users in like a month or so. Tons of folks I know, including myself, are checking it out just bc it’s brand new. Personally, I’ve seen enough and it’s pretty garbo, and I’m guessing a lot of people will do the same.
Folks will drop it because it’s cringe before they drop it for anything privacy related.
@Kovu Threads is the perfect example that if you put a huge warm and steamy turd into people's faces, but you spent some good money in advertising and PR. They still will want it, even if you tell them that is a 💩 that has no value at all.
Ooh, Threads? Yeah - Threads is great. Of course, you're referring to the award-winning anti-war film about nuclear war, right? Right??
