If you take several steps back and think about it, you will realize every other social media platform started out just like Threads. It starts with the purpose of being..a social media platform. Meaning, the idea behind it is to help users connect with their friends and family and keep up with the daily lives and activities of people close to them that they can’t see in person every day. Keep in touch with each other when you don’t live together. No advertising, just genuine interaction within a circle of selected people (whether you know them offline or now) and a lot of fun.
Why do you get recommendations on social media?
After a while, all social media platforms start curating and modifying your timeline. You come across a post it thinks you would like (truth be told, Twitter has got this feature down; I do in fact like most of what I see on my “For You” timeline). Then you come across an ad for something it thinks might interest you (and most of the time, it has nothing to do with your interests or the kind of content you interact with). And then you get recommendations for users that it thinks you would like to have in your “following” list (another useless feature).
All such “recommendations” and “suggestions” go from being an occasional sponsored post one or two times a day to seeing them every two posts while scrolling your timeline. When most users are fed up with how the once beloved platform turned out, a brand new one emerges and steals the audience, just to repeat the cycle. With Threads here, as Mark has mentioned, the new sign-ups have some time until the individual user count reaches 1 billion and the platform starts incorporating ads.
Are ads the necessary evil?
Now if someone gets irritated with all the ads, which is understandable, it would be nice if everything was free and we just had the space to keep up with whoever we want to keep up with and create and have fun. But, think Duolingo. If you have been on the app, you know this, if you have never used it before, Duolingo is a free application (with subscription options) that has helped millions of users learn languages. The free version is not limited to the point where you can’t actually learn anything. You can legitimately master at least the basics of a foreign language in a short amount of time. And how is that possible? Thanks to ads. At the end of the day, it’s not like someone is forcing you to interact with the ads; just scroll past them, and you are good.
The data and privacy breach
Right, and another massive, arguably worse issue with Threads is the data concern. It’s currently so “insecure”, that some people joked about Mark not having to have ads on there, simply because he can make money selling user data. The EU has banned the platform and will likely not lift the bans unless the developers provide sufficient proof of privacy and data protection.
Because of this, non-EU users have become aware of the danger as well. Some even pointed out what a nightmare it would be, for instance, if Threads had access to your fitness and health information and bombarded you with ads targeted at people who want to lose weight. We’re talking, those ads promoting weight loss pills and detox tea. It’s indeed concerning, (but then again, is this not the case with existing social media platforms that operate just fine within the EU? Makes you think the ban is performative.)
Wrap up
Third party social media platforms have immediately launched special packages that offer new sign-ups to buy Threads reshares, likes, and followers. There’s also the concept of FOMO (the fear of missing out on what everyone else is doing). So it seems like peer pressure and marketing pressure to be on Threads are pretty high right now. 10 million users in the first 7 hours, more than 100 million in just a day or two, but didn’t Google+ also have 10 million sign-ups in a few hours? Yet it fell off as fast as it was launched. And let’s not forget that most of the sign-ups are from Instagram accounts (being linked and all). So, it’s not looking as bright for Threads as everyone makes it look. In any case, we will be the witnesses.
