'Threads' thread: A Zucker is born every minute

[Deskgrunt50]

I was not on twitter or facebook when either started. Joined maybe a year or so after both really started to get traction.

I was among the first 500,000 to join Threads, among what they are now claiming is 70 million.

Pretty interesting to watch the first couple days as it forms. Fun noodling around with it, seeing if the twitter accounts I like are showing up, and finding some interesting ones I haven't heard of.

That being said, it has a long way to go for it to be close to as useful as twitter was to me before Elmo. Needs the lacking features pretty much everyone has mention so far.

Will it get there? Hard to tell.

 

[Regan MacNeil]

I have an account, but I'm not gonna use it until/unless it becomes a place for breaking news. I don't give the slightest fork about influencers or political rage farmers.

 

[Twirling Time]

RIP Threads. You were good in The Client.

You can't post ass, Threads is doomed

Oh yeah?

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

RIP Threads. You were good in The Client.

You can't post ass, Threads is doomed

More importantly: Meta's Threads app is a privacy nightmare that won't launch in EU yet

 

[UPChip]

As someone who loathes touchscreen keyboards, both Threads (no desktop interface) and Twitter (murdered Tweetdeck, desktop interface is intentionally useless) are equally a waste of my time at the moment. Mostly, I just realize making technology that's free and useful is just foolish. Tonight, I was thrilled to see an app I wrestle with during the school year (OK, it's iWanamaker) was tracking a local golf tournament. For free! While getting scores, it shut down for maintenance. Until Sunday night.

I also loathe conspiracy theories, so I'm much more inclined to think of Elon Musk as an entitled rich asshole who is forced to double and triple down on a very bad investment in desperation than I buy the whole crypto-fascist edgelord stuff. I agree that Zuckerburg is probably not much better, but this has pretty much been the modus operandi of Facebook if not social media writ large since Facebook evolved beyond evaluating the forkability of Harvard co-eds. As they say, "If they're not charging you for the product, you're the product."

This might be naivete talking, but I think collecting giant amounts of data and being able to synthesize that data into something malevolent (or for that matter, even useful) is another matter entirely. Of course, we may already be there or be getting there (see China, People's Republic of) but I'm pretty boring. If the CIA is interested in my bitching about the Tigers and my affinity for PG-rated Instagram content, well, that's their time they're wasting.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

Threads signed up over 30 million people since they opened it up. People were yearning for somewhere to go that wasn't Twitter, somewhere there were not Incels and Nazis on every corner.

Sounds like a recent presidential election I remember.

 

[Neutral Corner]

I have not signed up for Threads yet. Meta outright says that the interface wasn't ready for prime time when it was released, and until the site is populated by accounts that interest me and you can get breaking news there it is of little interest to me.

While they seem to be overtly going out of their way to avoid the worst abuses of Twitter post Elmo, I don't hold Zuck in much higher regard. I remember the abuses of Facebook (Cambridge Analytica, anyone?) and I know how random and stupid their suspensions and enforcement are. Until Threads proves that it is different, I fully expect it to have most of the same issues.

Add that having Facebook, Instagram, and Threads all in the same computerized corporate family just invites all sorts of invasion of privacy and other such abuses. "It's better than debased Twitter" really isn't much of a recommendation.

 

[Kato]

Just signed up for Threads and it's been nothing but a barrage of junk/suggestions. It's a mess. Maybe it will get better, but it ain't ready for prime time.

 

[goalmouth]

To review: The problem with Threads isn't that its owner is one of history's worst villains, it's that the UX sucks.

OK, got it.

 

[Neutral Corner]

 

[Songbird]

I hold out hope for Twitter. I got Threads cuz monkey cee monkey deux. But Twitter is still better and will always be better.

 

[TopOfTheCircle]

I have put Threads, Spill, Discord, Snapchat, and Mastodon on my phone and playing around with them a little bit to see if they are easy enough to update and/or connect with my WordPress blog. I kind of like the design of Spill.