2y ago

Biden joins Meta's Threads after White House rebukes Elon Musk for ‘anti-semitic rhetoric’ on X

www.cnbc.com

The White House on Monday launched accounts on Meta’s Threads service for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, gaining a sizable following on an app that competes with Elon Musk’s X.

Accounts on Threads were also established for the first lady and second gentleman as well as for the White House itself. Biden’s account racked up 2 million followers within an hour of its debut.

The Threads push comes after Musk last week called an antisemitic conspiracy theory “the actual truth” on X to his 163 million listed followers. He also said some “Jewish communities” promote “anti-white” messaging and views, calling out the Anti-Defamation League and minorities. White House officials repeatedly rebuked Musk for what they called “anti-semitic rhetoric” on X over the last week.

Several major advertisers including Apple and Disney subsequently paused their spending on X. Musk defended himself on Sunday, without apologizing or rescinding his statements.

48 comments

Woulda been cooler if they spun up a US government Mastodon instance and made his account there, but this is certainly a step in the right direction
- Threads will eventually add activitypub, so someone with sway will learn about mastodon soon enough
  
  I kinda thought it would have happened by now, I hope they aren't quietly shelving development like Tumblr did
- Based on my experience in lemmy, if you are avoiding antisemitism, mastodon probably isn't a good place to go.
  
  Lemmy is probably still one of the best I've seen; but that's also a reallyyy low bar.
  There is a lot of anti-Israel on lemmy, but I believe in good faith it isn't coming from a core place of anti-semitism. Like like, anti-US if anything.
  
  Are you confusing animtisem with being against a horrific genocide that has being going on for decades? A lot of Americans don't seem to be able to make the destination. Hamas is a shockingly disgusting terrorist group, that doesn't mean Israel isn't a shockingly disgusting terrorist state. Being anti Israel is not the same as being anti Jewish
- It is most likely because they can be officially verified on Threads and limit a situation of impersonation (if I had to guess). I don’t use threads so idk but I it would be a major concern to be spoofed which is a lot easier on decentralized instances at the moment.
  Does anyone know if there is a verified focused instance that’s invite only and has a vetting process for notable people?
  
  You can be verified on Mastodon, too. You just have to put a line of html on a website you control and you are verified by that website. For most of us, that is of limited use. I'm verified by my Github account which is also an anonymous alias (I enjoy my privacy), but having a verified link to whitehouse.gov would be pretty definitive.
Facebook: oh shit we left that on
There's a lot of criticism of this move which I think is unwarranted.
Because of Musk's statements, continuing to post on Twitter (I refuse to call it X) is becoming less and less tenable for a lot of people.
But the White House isn't concerned with which competitor will rise to take its place. They're not interested in supporting a corporation vs. a competitive startup. The White House is solely interested in reaching the highest number of people possible with official communications. And for better or worse, Threads is going to be the closest thing to having an active userbase that's anywhere close to the size of Twitter. Mastodon as a whole wouldn't even come close; Mastodon has about 1.8 million users/month. Biden got that on Threads in under an hour.
- I agree with the sentiment, but they could just do both. It's not like they are mutually exclusive.
  If they want to reach more people, Mastadon will help them do it.
  
  Haven't looked into Mastodon too much, but would it be able to handle that much traffic? I remember some of the Lemmy instances had issues when reddit dropped 3rd party API.
- If European governments can manage to join Mastodon, the Biden administration has no excuse.
  
  If someone told you that you obtain 15 units per hour or 1 unit per hour and the number of units you acquire decide whether or not you exist or are thrown in prison for charges that have not been made up yet, which would you choose? I'd start with the 15, and if I have enough hours left, add in the 1 after.
- I'm not arguing against Threads being a wider audience, but I do just want to point out that many people may be auto-following. I keep seeing notifications from Threads that I'm now following someone because I was previously already following them (on FB, I guess), and I haven't opened Threads in a while.
- I can't believe this is the only sane take in the thread so far.
Am I disappointed it's still a shitty social media company? Yes.
But is this a good thing? Absolutely. Biden moving to threads gives threads more legitimacy as a competitor. When more groups start using something other than Twitter for communication, Twitter can finally die.
- Yeah, Meta sucks, but it doesn't suck at the Elon Musk level. Lesser evil and all.
He also said some “Jewish communities” promote “anti-white” messaging and views
I just have to point out once again that Jews are only white when it's convenient.
From one jackass platform to the other
Nothing in the world is ever going to get me to join a Meta run service.
Join Mastodon, you corporate cowards.
*Biden's PR team joins Meta's Threads
From one creepy billionaire’s closed platform to another. Not much of an improvement.
Like leaving your abusive boyfriend for your abusive ex-husband.

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