> The goal isn't to replace Twitter. The goal is to create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less angry place for conversations, but not all of Twitter.
So only the super PC, brand friendly stuff? Guess I shouldn’t be surprised given it’s Meta but disappointing if true. How can you have a public square without fostering news and political niches? That doesn’t mean you have to shove it in everyone’s feeds like Elon’s Twitter.
So it really will just be instagram with a text focus then. Was hoping all the influencer/celeb/brand focus early on was just a result of early app launch and no following feed yet.
> How can you have a public square without fostering news and political niches
Most people in most public squares aren’t engaging in civic discourse. They’re bantering and conversing and trading. With Reddit and Twitter simultaneously crapping the bed, there’s a valid niche for that sort of square on the internet.
We still need a public square for civic discourse. But it’s clear the current model optimises for bloviation and posturing. Maybe there’s a better model than every person their own broadcaster.
What do you think is happening on the internet or social media? Most of the internet or social media is non-political and non-news related.
> Maybe there’s a better model than every person their own broadcaster.
You are blaming 'every person' when the toxicity of news and politics is news and politics itself. It's the toxic mainstream news and politicians that are the problem. Not 'every person'.
How is that possible without becoming an echo chamber? I believe it won't happen without categorization in question/answer/redirect/objection + grouping into opinion-direction per group to curtail baseless attacks and attempts at homogenization to "be right". Everyone can be right in their own way anyway, just formalize it.
If you read his posts more than the one in the article. He is basically saying these topics will exists on the platform and they are welcomed, but they aren't to promote them or include them in the service as they do on other platforms. Which basically means they probably aren't going to show you news and politics through the algorithm.
I think they are going for more promoting communities topics like sports, fashion, entertainment ect than hot topics like news and politics.
I'm perfectly fine with an internet platform, especially if run by a private company, that explicitly embraces the fact that it's a discussion platform for fashion, video games, or whatever anime or movie someone has seen instead of some mad billionaire's experiment.
If you want politics the correct place is your local townhall, want news subscribe to a quality paper. Instagram is decent precisely because it is limited to the kind of content I trust Meta with. Politics on Twitter isn't people genuinely being productive citizens, it's political hobbyism, purely for entertainment and self-expression, politics as spectator sport.
The internet is saturated with ridiculous caricatures of politics. These mostly existed before, but have been grossly exacerbated by algorithms which make people angry on purpose so as to 'drive engagement' (hmm).
Facebook is now offering the 'cure' to a disease they spread themselves, for profit. And monetizing it, with ads from corporations who lobby heavily.
This 'cure' is another series of steps toward complete disengagement with everything that might actually improve the lives of the 99% (ie, actual politics).
Climate change is politics, inequality is politics, corruption is politics - all of it shoved under the rug in favor of yet more inane sports and celebrity trivia.
If posting on twitter is your idea of how to get things done in politics (as many people believe) then it not being on twitter is a boon for us all. Actual civic engagement is what's needed, not posturing for your party (it's a lot like the sports you mentioned, root for your own team) via small text blurbs.
I guess the part where I'm confused is how you think de-platforming politics at mass population scale will increase civil engagement somehow.
Like, isn't "small text blurbs" better than nothing? ... Do you think billionaires bought and crippled Twitter and Reddit for our sake?
We recently got hard evidence that Facebook and Twitter censored true information at the White House's request; to drive people toward a desired political outcome... On Threads, that wouldn't even have been necessary. They just call any debate they don't like 'political', and de-platform it. Silent, and deadly.
Reddit and Twitter have been suicided. That's not actually a boon, as toxic as they were pre-Musk and pre-SpezGate. Now a platform where political engagement is explicitly shadowbanned rises up to offer ever-more vacuous bullshit heavily dosed with pro-corporate propaganda, with the glimpses of substance all expressly filtered out. That's not a boon either, though that's what seems to be the spin.
I do hope your optimism isn't misplaced. Maybe driving the engaged people toward defederated platforms will work out, and we can leave the sports-minded to their own devices - but realistically, those people will be weaponized against change even more easily once the agitators have been sectioned off.
It's like the free speech zones Bush brought in - say whatever the fuck you like, in this little cage two miles from any TV cameras.
> Like, isn't "small text blurbs" better than nothing?
I honestly don't think they are. Small text blurbs are not actually informative. You can't engage in nuance, you can't really argue a position, and you can't really have a good debate. They're just good for bloviating, and there are lots of places where you can bloviate anyway.
Something that's particularly interesting; on Pod Save America, they referenced a study (which I forget right now) that tracked protest effectiveness vs size, and right around the time that twitter/facebook started taking off, protest size skyrocketed while protest effectiveness plummeted.
As it turns out, social media short-circuited traditional methods of organizing. Those traditional methods of organizing, ie, actually knocking on doors and talking with your neighbours, were also the social glue that formed civic groups which did stuff after the protest ended, like voter drives or lobbying politicians, political tactics which actually worked.
That was also within a few years of Bush W making moves to cut protest effectiveness, such as the free speech zones. Not to mention, there are plenty of examples of social media creating very effective protests, which then inspired heavy handed tactics in retaliation, with examples of this from all over the world.
Do you think what happened to OWS was just because of tweets lack of effectiveness? I don't believe that, and neither should you.
I did try to find the study you mentioned, as well as the podcast, but came up empty. Got a link handy?
Hm I never realized the parallel between politics and sports lol (and more than just the ra ra fandom sense).
I think why I enjoy sports so much more than politics—my ministry is the NBA and WNBA—is that it’s inherently a game so you don’t impose any of the IRL stress politics does. And to elaborate on why I find them similar is that in sports, you take stock of the landscape, analyze your standing, and strategize on improving eg optimal use of resources. And those r true over stretches of years or during a single game.
As the parent alluded to, Twitter is definitely not the place for this nuanced discourse and unfortunately any stereotypical nerd that would be more wont to honestly engage probably didn’t grow up playing a sport or at the very least not such a mainstream American sport like basketball and has no interest in the topic.
But it’s whatever. I still find great joy theorizing, seeing the results of different implementations, being presented with ideas I hadn’t thought of (these r like lineup combos and play calls), team/player growth, etc
I'd rather a more conservative approach than copy+pasting the vitriol and polarization of Twitter onto a new platform. And it's a smart move to make it friendlier to users who were uninterested in Twitter because of this dominant characteristic.
Of course, the journalists are up in arms, but the relationship between incendiary news / Tweets and its influence on journalistic narratives reported on is a big structural risk. I think of it like separation of prop trading firms and banks, rather than having an unenforced Chinese wall between them.
I'm no fan of Meta/FB because of their attitude to privacy and their own brand of toxic social media on Facebook but it's hard to argue against the approach taken with the launch here.
I don't believe the approach is conservative in as much as it's necessary product development: you have to know your audience, your market, and by virtue that means you know what you aren't going to cater for. No hard news, no divisive politics, no journalistic commentary? Totally fair and I imagine many will find that refreshing; same reason why people come on HN for the technical niche except this time it's optimised for Instagrammers and influencers.
Musk made his own play with Twitter in a similar vein by choosing what audience he preferred to cater to and, in effect, scored an own goal of epic proportions. A truly ludicrous display given Twitter's ubiquity before he took the reins.
> There are more than enough amazing communities – sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment, etc – to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news.
So it's literally nothing more than text-based Instagram.
If "The goal isn't to replace Twitter", then what's the point, and why rush the launch, with a ton of missing features, just to take advantage of Twitter's latest problems? ("This was a lot more of a yolo launch than anything we've done in a long while." https://www.threads.net/t/CuZpfirN81T)
> If "The goal isn't to replace Twitter", then what's the point, and why rush the launch, with a ton of missing features, just to take advantage of Twitter's latest problems? ("This was a lot more of a yolo launch than anything we've done in a long while
It is just a narrative to counter Twitter’s lawsuit.
> It is just a narrative to counter Twitter’s lawsuit.
There's no lawsuit. There was a letter sent from Twitter's lawyer, and it's a complete joke. Meta has already denied that any former Twitter employees worked on Threads.
> There's no lawsuit. There was a letter sent from Twitter's lawyer, and it's a complete joke. Meta has already denied that any former Twitter employees worked on Threads.
You can also counter lawsuit by preventing it to happen. (Letter was threat)
And it does not matter what Meta says. If someone wants to sue, court it is.
And it would be interesting case, since they are quite identical apps.
You are either implying that either it is impossible to influence things by saying things or that countering cannot also happen beforhand if the lawsuit happens (while also helps in preventing that). Why people argue about everything.
Right?! This is the dumbest bit from a pretty dumb statement. Politics is just people working out how they're going to interact with each other. There's no way to cordon that off from anything else. You can certainly pretend that those industries don't interact with politics, but that's just another form of politics.
If this is a YOLO launch, then Facebook have scale and moderation down to a science now. Hats off, those were very hard challenges in the early days of web 2.0
What? Its mostly influencer BS with some memes and random dances on Reels and stories to share what you ate today, also out of date news because of an algorithmic timeline.
The algorithm is probably showing you political stuff, but its definitely not the majority of content.
> If "The goal isn't to replace Twitter", then what's the point
To corrupt and destroy the Fediverse, with a 'Twitter killer' narrative to the point where not even the anti-trust enforcers can begin to argue that Threads has lock-in since the users can move off of Threads. (Which they won't move anyway.)
But we'll see when Meta eventually begins to screw over their users. I doubt they would care. But at this point, they are the new Fediverse.
Threads (Instagram) already confirmed that they will federate and has the resources and money to do it, so the likelihood is almost certain.
With 90M users, they are essentially the new Fediverse. All other Mastodon instances see that as a threat and banned it in advance. Otherwise those NDAs would never have been signed or sent in the first place to those admins of large instances. Might as well have been a blank document if they were joking.
In reality, it has already split and corrupted the Fediverse. (Thanks to the signed NDAs.)
The question here isn't whether Threads will corrupt and destroy the Fediverse, the question is why does Threads exist? To corrupt and destroy the Fediverse is a nonsense answer. Why would Meta care about corrupting and destroying the Fediverse, which is extremely tiny compared to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook?
You mentioned Fediverse support as somehow protecting Threads from antitrust regulators (a dubious notion itself), but there wouldn't be any need to protect Threads from antitrust regulators if threads didn't exist! What exactly is the raison d'être of Threads, if not to replace Twitter?
I know you love to bash Mastodon, but it's a red herring to this discussion.
The bare-bones launch of Threads seems to reveal Meta's priorities: the algorithmic feed, and the promotion of brands and influencers.
You have to spend 5 minutes on Threads to see it for what it is – an extension of Instagram full of brands, celebrities and influencers. That isn't in itself a good or bad thing, just what it is.
One potential saving grace is the future ActivityPub support that will let you access Mastadon and the rest of the Fediverse from the Threads app, but it remains to be seen how they actually implement it.
Yup. Also there's a LOT of influencers who missed the organic growth phase of Twitter and this is their chance to make up for missing out. Such people are going to be power users for sure
They have committed to it pretty publicly, and your Threads profile even shows what server you belong to, so there's definitely some support already in there.
as far as I understand, most of the external content of mastodon can be retrieved if one user of the instance you're using follows a tag. having so many users on threads, I bet they could pretty much index whatever they want (because they will pretty much have almost all of the tags) and implement a search on top of it. that's if they want to do it.
I’m so glad that there’s a website where we can finally see the Wendy’s brand account riff with Heinz about promotional Is It Cake? posts or whatever other thing the masses are clamoring to read
It’s not just Canada. Other countries have been threatening similar laws before, and more countries will do so as well in the future. Meta knows this. Taking that into account is good.
Also, they want to differentiate this Thread place from other places. Saying that news is not the point is a good idea I think. Even though I don’t like Meta and don’t want them to succeed.
I almost feel like it is competing more with FB than anything, which could possibly work. None of my friends use Facebook but presumably there is still a need for people to ask what restaurants or good or if anyone is available to be a babysitter?
People can obviously post on their stories - but I think there is something about a photo based medium that makes some people reluctant to post at all or slide into other people's DMs.
What exactly is threads for? Not for sharing interesting headlines? I am not sure what's is purpose really is and how it differs from Instagram and Facebook.
Is it just to show me celebrity one liners? Show me obvious product placements.. or heavily promoted movies?
As an artist its totally pointless, no hashtags mean no discoverability. Intagram itself is overrun with pointless AI so forget anyone seeing your work. there. This seems barely a WIP anyway, they only released it because of Twitter imploding.
I wonder how many people are working on this barebones implementation.
Wild that people are instantly kneejerking about this, news and politics on social is such a tire fire, but it seems like a lot of people can't parse that out from news and politics also being important.
That's a misrepresentation of the position. They've pretty explicitly said that they aren't going to do anything against these topics, just that they aren't going to court them like they had in the past.
That's most likely why Threads doesn't use hashtags or has a search function for words and phrases. It keeps those pesky activists from boosting the message.
Watch the algo push those posts into the dirt. People talk about these things because they get airtime, they probably won’t post hyper partisan hot takes if they’re punished for it.
They're just saying they won't encourage news/politics, not that they'll police them off:
> "Politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads - they have on Instagram as well to some extent - but we're not going to do anything to encourage those verticals."
It's not really that hard. There's only an algorithmic timeline, so they can just downrank all the shit they don't want there. Just downrank all posters who frequently use terms such as "Biden", "Trump", "White House", "Supreme Court", "the midterm election" etc. and you'll have suppressed it.
We're building forth.news, which is sort of the exact opposite of this view point. We're only news. Only journalists post, so theres no hate speech, no spam, and no misinfo.
If you want to get headlines, and you want to curate your own feed, check out https://www.forth.news
> Only journalists post, so theres no hate speech, no spam, and no misinfo.
This is such a bad take that you actually made me laugh out loud. Not trying to be negative but I believe you need to discuss the idea with real people before going all-in. There are plenty of misinformation in any "legit" newspaper. Journalist also isn't a protected title in a lot of countries so anyone can call themselves a journalist. It doesn't automatically make your claims true. On the contrary, a lot of people go into journalism because they are passionate about certain topics, similar to activists.
You seem to have missed the point. You claimed that it was due to only having journalists that you wouldn't have hate speech or misinfo. Except many journalists spew that shit constantly. If you aren't having those things its not due to the fact that journalists are in some way above them, it's because of something else you are doing.
In fact, I would consider your original claim to be "misinfo", so I hope you aren't spreading it on your fancy new site.
So only the super PC, brand friendly stuff? Guess I shouldn’t be surprised given it’s Meta but disappointing if true. How can you have a public square without fostering news and political niches? That doesn’t mean you have to shove it in everyone’s feeds like Elon’s Twitter.
So it really will just be instagram with a text focus then. Was hoping all the influencer/celeb/brand focus early on was just a result of early app launch and no following feed yet.