unspools meta threads

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In early December, when news first leaked that Meta was considering new ways to challenge Twitter, I texted Adam Mosseri.

We had been two months into Twitter under Elon Musk’s ownership, and it was clear that the social network I depended on most was starting to fall apart. To me, it felt important that something like Twitter exist — a place to share news, jokes, and other short bits of writing, in a chatty public space that gives me a sense of daily conversation.

And so I told Mosseri that I hope Meta will follow through.

On one hand, the history of Facebook and Instagram offers several reasons why the company may not be as well suited to run a Twitter successor. Of course, failures have piled up over the years regarding content moderation. And the reality is, if Meta is successful here, it will expand into one of the last frontiers of social networking in which it was not already dominant. In general I want Big Tech to be less consolidated, not more.

On the other hand, though, the past few months have shown Instagram to be much better at content moderation than Twitter 2.0. And Meta ultimately decided to build its Twitter rival in a decentralized way — setting it up to be interoperable with Mastodon and whatever might be built on ActivityPub in the future. Ultimately, Mosseri told me in an interview today, the company hopes that your audience will be with you when you leave the new app. It’s a level of freedom that users of Facebook or Instagram – or really any other big social app – have never had.

In December, Mosseri told me he was undecided about whether to proceed with a new Twitter challenger. New social apps are more likely to fail than succeed, and Twitter already had such a dedicated user base.

However, with each passing day, that latter statement becomes less true. Elon Musk’s surprisingly stupid decision last week Limit free users to 600 posts per day — maybe enough for 20 minutes of scrolling, maybe even less — has sent a new wave of Twitter users looking for alternatives.

That brings us to today, when Meta is releasing the first version of its new app, threads,

I’ve spent the last few hours testing Threads, which will be rolling out to the App Store as soon as this newsletter goes out. Like many other Twitter rivals launched over the past few months, it’s a pretty lackluster interpretation of the text-based messaging app.

“Our hope is that Threads is an open, friendly place for public conversation. Specifically focused on creators,” Mosseri told me and my podcast co-host, Kevin Roose, in an interview Wednesday afternoon. (The full conversation is included in tomorrow’s special episode of Hard Fork.)

It opens to a simple feed similar to Twitter’s home timeline. Unlike Twitter’s feed, Threads includes recommended posts from across the network — at this stage, it’s a useful way to find out what’s happening on the app. For now, there’s no way to see feeds of only users you follow. (There’s no hashtags here, no edit button, and no way to search for anything other than a user handle.)

Log in with your Instagram handle. You can even import your Instagram bio and photos with one click. You can choose to follow someone you already follow on Instagram on Threads; As your Instagram follows join threads, you will automatically follow them too.

It’s nothing fancy, but it’s already a lot easier than following people on Mastodon, the native social app built on the ActivityPub protocol. To follow someone on Mastodon, you often need to know their server and full username (I am). @caseynewton@mastodon.social.) On threads, it’s as easy as typing in their Instagram handle. (I am @crumbler.) It’s a small thing – but, I suspect, it can make a big difference.

From there… it’s basically just Twitter. You type your sentences and add a photo if you want. You post your… stitches? Wire? Threat? …in the feed. You check your notifications in a tab represented by the heart emoji. You can search for other users. You can answer.

It’s basically Twitter in 2010, in other words, with one cool feature that’s been added since then: quote-tweets, which Mastodon refrained from adding but has become an essential feature of the modern Twitter experience ( I feel) .

If Meta had launched this app in 2019, it seems safe to say, everyone would have rolled their eyes. Its big new feature is…Logging in with Instagram? come on.

However, even by Twitter 2.0’s standards, it may feel like a miracle. Reading Unlimited Posts for Free? On a robust network that basically never goes down? It is monitored by a strong team of content moderators, adhering to a stable set of community guidelines.

when the competition is an app Where “cisgender” is considered a slangThreads find it easy to emerge as an oasis of calm and civility.

However, why isn’t the text included in the main Instagram app?

As it turned out later, Mosseri gave his team a chance. But everything he tried felt imposed and unfair. What makes Twitter unique, Mosseri said, is that replies are given the same visual priority as the original post. In a world where every other social network buries comments at the bottom of posts, Twitter elevates them. And it encourages people to participate in discussions.

“The post-and-comment model is great,” Mosseri said. “But it doesn’t really support public discussion as well as the tweet-and-reply model. Elevating the answer to the same level as the original post allows for more robust, diverse discourse. That’s why we didn’t try to put this thing in the feed or a separate tab on Instagram.

Another feature that could spark more discussions: Instagram’s network isn’t starting from scratch. Yes, it will be manufactured on the company’s own network. But over time, Threads will let you follow the discussion on Mastodon and potentially other services adopting ActivityPub. Tumblr and WordPress.com, which share a parent company, have both said they will support publishing on the protocol. Then, in a year or two, you can be reading WordPress.com blog posts in Threads – or Threads posts in your favorite Mastodon client.

It’s an almost unimaginable reversal from Meta’s wildly lucrative walled-garden strategy, which it has employed throughout its history as a company. But Mosseri told me that decentralization is the future of social networks — even if it means that someday a disgruntled Threads user will be able to move the following they’ve built up in the app to another network, never to return.

“There are definitely business closures,” Mosseri said. “You’re giving up some control. But there are advantages too. I think over time, this is going to become a more attractive value proposition that other apps are going to offer. And I think in the long run it should attract more creative talent.

One big question about threads is how content moderation will work on it and other decentralized social networks. There is a risk that posts that would never be allowed on Instagram may appear on threads anyway if they come from another server using the ActivityPub protocol that Instagram does not control.

For now, Threads only shows posts from its servers, Mosseri said, and everything will be governed by Instagram’s existing community standards. But ActivityPub actually lets services like Threads choose to block certain types of content before it arrives on the app, Mosseri said. He is optimistic that this will overcome the worst problems in content moderation.

Where is the money in all this for Meta? Possible advertising, although as is usually the case when Meta launches a new product, the launch will be ad-free as the company explores whether it can attract enough users to make this a worthwhile business opportunity Is. “It’s not our focus at all right now, to be honest,” Mosseri said.

The biggest concern right now is launching Threads in all the countries Meta wants to. It won’t be available at launch in the EU as Meta works to ensure that Threads complies with the EU’s new data privacy rules.

“Unfortunately, it’s just going to take a while – and I’m especially frustrated by this point, as I’ve been living out of the US for a year now,” said Mosseri, who is working from London. “I am all set with my teams to stop launching things only in certain countries and not others. …but in this case, we either wait on the EU, or delay the launch by several months. And I was worried that our window would close, because time is of the essence.

The initial hours of Threads have been full of excitement and drama indeed. But you would expect the same from a user base that mainly consists of big celebrities, influencers and Instagram employees.

The real question is whether the old meta can create a place that feels like a party – a place you’d choose to hang out over the alternatives.

This is something that BlueSky, another decentralized Twitter clone built on a different protocol, done right, The software is as basic as it can be. But the people who use the invite-only app are mostly having a good time. Its team has wisely slowed down the pace of invites in the hopes that it can maintain the mindless, chatty posting ethos that has defined it so far, and it keeps me coming back every day to watch it. Given what people are talking about.

The challenge for the meta is that it’s not clear to what extent Vibe can be controlled on threads. There is clearly huge anticipation for the app in the media, which is Every twist of its planned launch was obsessively covered, But you cannot build a social network out of journalists alone. And while Threads’ first roster of users is impressive — it includes Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, and Karlie Kloss — they’ll only stick around as long as they feel like their posts are getting an audience.

The company keeps a clear eye on that reality.

“It’s not as hard to get a group of people to try something as it is to make a group of people want to keep using it over time,” Mosseri said.

There are only a few dozen people working on Threads at the moment – a relatively small team by Meta standards. Plus, it may be the largest team currently working on a true Twitter competitor in the United States. If the Threads team can push out new features and improvements to the user experience faster than its competitors — which seems like a low bar — it could become the team to beat. (Two obvious places to start: working embeds that let me put those cool threads into a newsletter, and one-tap cross-posting from threads to Instagram Stories, with links inserted into stories to aid search.)

And if nothing else, Threads might just nudge Elon Musk to make even worse mistakes than he already has. I wouldn’t be surprised if he challenges Mosseri to a martial arts fight, as he previously challenged Mark Zuckerberg.

Mosseri, on his part, said that he would like to set aside that part.

“It’s among those,” laughed Mosseri. When we spoke, the launch of Threads was only hours away, and he was late for a meeting. “I’ll be focused on getting this thing out to everyone, making sure it’s fast, and works really well. And I’ll let them do the rest.”