I’ve been using Twitter since my early teens, which means I’ve had at least six separate accounts over the years. I kept getting older, reading my old tweets back, getting embarrassed and deleting them off the internet forever so nobody knows I was once a loser. I grew up mainlining Twitter culture into my body and brain – it’s how I know anything at all about the internet, and what other people think about things. I used it to post poetry, as a diary, as a professional networking tool, as a freelance opportunity aggregator. Twitter has served me well for over a decade, and now it’s dying because a manbaꩲby bought a company instead of going to t🌱herapy.People are fleeing to competitors even as I write this. Many have chosen to migrate to Bluesky, co-founder of Twitter Jack Dorsey’s new project. Others have chosen Cohost and Hive, which picked up traction a few months ago but have failed to retain substantial user activity. Now, Meta has joined the fray, launching Threads, a Twitter lookalike that you can use your Instagram account to log in to. Posts can be up to 500 characters long, and videos can be up to five minutes long. It’s positioned as Twitter, but better. It sucks.Of course, people are flocking to it regardless. It’s the most easily accessible Twitter alternative available right now, since most already have Instagram accounts and Bluesky, the next most popular alternative, requires an invite code. Threads is right there, and people can leverage their Instagram accounts to ♍get followers. It’s a no-brainer, if you don’t care about the issues with the new social network – and boy, are there issues!
For one, the privacy iss🅷ues are off the charts.🎃 There is no reason why this app should need your health information, financial information, location, contacts, browsing history, purchases and other sensitive information, and yet the app store listing for Threads states that it may collect that information and link it to your identity. In fact, it legally can’t launch in the EU, because under current laws, sensitive information needs a higher standard of explicit consent to be legally processed so as to not violate the General Data Protection Regulation.
Meta is known for making its money from tracking and profiling web users in order to target ads to them, and Threads is made to do exactly that. Log in and you’ll be inundated with tweets – or Threads, whatever we’re calling them – served to you by an algorithm, out of order, from people you don’t follow.🌳 It’s like the garbage Reels algorithm, but for Twitter. It’s all about the attention economy, not about actually being something users want. It’s barely any better than Twitter as a product, it’s just not being actively driven into the ground by Elon Musk.
Another thing that sucks: you can’t delete your Threads account without deleting your entire Instagram account. You can deactivate it, but once you link your Threads account with your Instagram, you’re pretty much locked in unles♛s you choose the nuclear option and delete your entire social media presence. Your Threads username is also the same 🌃as your Instagram username.
I hate this. My Instagram has always been a relatively private place where I feel comfortable sharing pictures of my loved ones with people I know. It is not a professional space for me, it is a shitposting space. It is where I post screenshots of stupid things my friends say, dumb faces my partner makes, and pictures of my family. I have so far refused to turn my Instagram into a brand – I don’t even use my full name there – 🌞but if I’m forced to move my professional network there because everyꦓbody else is, that’s the end of my privacy. I could, technically, create a whole new account, but that would be deeply annoying because I don’t want or need another Instagram account.
Threads is part of Instagram, and it’s designed to feed into the algorithm that keeps you scrolling. As the case always is with Meta, you are the product, not the audience. Threads sucks, and I really hope Twitter co🀅llectively decides to choose another platform to move to. But it’s the past of least resistance, and I’m dreading having to move there too.