Could Threads Replace Twitter as Washington’s Political Watercooler?

A week after Meta launched Threads, a Twitter doppelganger disguised as Instagram-but-for-text, professional posters in Washington are watching it closely, eager to see if it’s a viable online platform. Will join the community together or will soon be over like many other hopefuls. Original microblogging platform.

This isn’t the first time the intensely online set of Capitol Hill has wondered whether a new app might be taking away their favorite time-wasters on Twitter. In the wake of Elon Musk buying Twitter last year and immediately laying off most of its workforce, Washington considered alternatives such as Mastodon and the Post. But even though Twitter has been slowly burning — the platform has been riddled with bugs, bots and bitcoin bros since Musk took office — those apps have been a flash in the pan, fading after a surge in the number of users. Is.

When CQ Roll Call asked communications and digital staffers in December whether they thought Twitter could be dethroned as Washington’s digital watercooler of choice, their skeptics were correct. An aide said, “Twitter isn’t going anywhere.”

But it was only a matter of time before the world’s largest social media company entered the picture. As Twitter toyed with limiting the number of tweets users could see, Threads reported more than 100 million sign-ups in its first week, including some of the biggest names in politics and journalism . So is Washington finally ready to give up its abusive, addiction-capable relationship with Twitter and engage with Threads instead?

not enough. Republican and Democratic colleagues alike said they’ve called their bosses on the threads only if it moves forward, not because they really expect it, with some even saying they’re cross-posting on the new app. was tweeting “We put up a flag so that if things go a certain way, we’re there,” said Ben Kamens, communications director for Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio.

Despite Threads’ record-setting debut, academic experts similarly questioned whether it could dethrone Twitter.

“I’m an eternal pessimist,” said Anneliese Russell, professor of public policy at the University of Kentucky, who studies how politicians use social media. “Google Plus showed us that just because you start with an advantage doesn’t mean you’ll win the day.”

guys. It’s Time for Some Game Theory

The question of whether a social media network will be successful is a classic collective action problem: If you use it I’ll use it, and if I use it you’ll use it, but if you’re not using it If I’m not using it, then I’m not using it, and if I’m not using it, then you’re not using it either.

Threads attempts to avoid that dilemma by effectively importing Instagram users, and automatically giving them a built-in network of who they follow there. (Though, as Russell and some Hill colleagues note, most friends and family don’t have the same network they built on Twitter; you may love your maternal grandfather but hate his hot ideas on politics.) .)

The success of Threads, Russell said, will depend not only on the number of users but on the quality of them. Twitter’s “special sauce” was bringing together news makers, news breakers and news junkies.

“I always ask the question: Where are the reporters going and where are the Congressional staffers going?” Russell said.

So far, they’ve been visiting most threads without ever leaving Twitter. Several journalists with large social media presences are experimenting with threads, such as Maggie Haberman of The New York Times and Jake Tapper of CNN, as well as lesser-known journalists who may not even ask their spouses to follow them. . Members of Congress have similarly started playing on the platform, and some have already amassed tons of followers: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Dn.Y., had 1 million as of Thursday, and Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, was 68,600.

While AOC has been a fairly active Thread-er, Crenshaw hasn’t posted a single one yet, reflecting the partisan divide in longing for a viable Twitter replacement.

“Twitter continues to get worse,” said Daniel Shuman, policy director of the left-leaning advocacy group Demand Progress, citing an influx of white supremacists and other right-wing reactionaries to the site since Musk violated Twitter’s censorship policies. Has been given. “People are really looking for alternatives.”

Michael Suchecki, creative director and associate at the Democratic Digital Communications Staff Association, said, “After seeing this gross mismanagement and the growing propaganda of hate and xenophobia on Twitter, it is not surprising that Congress and its staff unions are fleeing to other platforms.” Are.” Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton. “Threads are a place where we … are able to engage certain constituents or communities in a better way than Twitter, which is just a hate-for-profit institution at the moment.”

While GOP allies say some of the changes to Twitter have been bad, such as tweet limits and an increased number of spam bots, they mostly think it’s going well, applauding updates like the new Community Notes feature that lets users to collectively add context to arguably misleading tweets.

A House GOP staffer said on condition of anonymity, “Despite the issue of tweet limits that has come to the fore over the past few days, I don’t get the sense that (Republicans) are exploring alternatives.” Authorized to speak to the press.

“Among conservatives, there is a lot of concern that Threads will be a highly curated place,” he said, repeating complaints from Republicans that pre-Musk Twitter’s censorship practices were biased against conservatives.

Still, if it moves forward, Republicans like him will go where the audience is. “If there’s a big move on this, I think we’ll probably follow,” he said.

Despite Musk’s desire to quit Twitter, liberals aren’t exactly thrilled about Mark Zuckerberg’s involvement with the latest app. “This doesn’t mean that Mark Zuckerberg is some careful, inspirational visionary — his platform helped perpetuate genocides around the world,” Suchecki said.

When will we know if Threads has taken over Twitter? Russell says she’ll watch politicians who react to breaking news first as a sign of dominance of threads, as well as Hill reporters posting snippets of hallway gaggles there first, or tweeting them out instead. . For Cummins, “It’s really a matter of when does Twitter become MySpace: when does it become the place where everybody used to be but nobody is now?”

Some Democratic aides said they hoped BlueSky Social would move forward, saying its functionality was better than other potential Twitter replacements. The app began allowing some users to join by invitation in February, but remains in beta testing with a total of 300,000 users. Now that delay could prove costly once Threads is launched. “Did he miss his moment?” Schumann was surprised.

“By far the biggest complaint with Threads among Capital’s professional posters is the lack of a desktop version of the app,” Kamens said, “which makes it really difficult to manage for people who already have three or four other accounts.” managing.”

Meta executives have said that desktop access is coming, as well as the option to limit your feed to only people you follow, a real search function and other features conspicuously absent at its launch. They will likely make the app more useful for the news sharing and networking purposes that have made Twitter such an integral part of Washington insiders.

But it’s not entirely clear how much Meta wants Threads to replace Twitter as Capitol Hill’s virtual town hall.

it is rude to talk politics on the threads table

When Alex Heath, an editor at The Verge, posted a thread saying that journalists would need to adopt the app “to become a real Twitter competitor” and wondered whether Meta was ready to do so, because Lately he has shied away from news on his other platforms. , Adam Mosseri, a Meta executive who leads Instagram, responded.

“The goal is not to replace Twitter,” he wrote, adding that the aim was to create “a public platform” for Instagram users who have never used Twitter and those who want a “less angry place for conversation.”

“Politics and hard news are important, I don’t want to imply otherwise. But … any incremental engagement or revenue they may drive is not worth the scrutiny, negativity (let’s be honest), or integrity risk that comes with them.” Come on,” Mosseri wrote in a follow-up post.

This could simply be a corporate stance ahead of antitrust inquiries — Meta has stopped launching in the EU, possibly due to the bloc’s more aggressive competition and privacy policies — or the intellectual property lawsuit Musk has already threatened to bring.

And if Meta, a company wholly controlled by one of the world’s richest men, has turned its attention away from its main source of revenue in favor of spending tens of billions on creating a highly speculative virtual reality “metaverse” for investors. transferred to. The objections are so focused on maximizing return on investment, it’s unclear why they chose to emulate Twitter — a company that has reported annual profits only twice in its 17 years and is now owned by another tech tycoon. I have whether Zuckerberg likes it or not. Beat it to a bloody pulp.

Mosseri said Threads won’t downrank news posts in its algorithms, so it’s unclear how the app might be discouraging political discussion or encouraging passive distraction. But, on their part, the Flakes aren’t buying what the Meta executives are whipping up.

“It’s ridiculous for them to say, ‘We don’t want to be Twitter,’ when it’s a carbon copy of Twitter,” the GOP staffer said.

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