Tangled webs, etc

So in the midst of the Twitter meltdown, eventual presumed rise of Bluesky, and whatever’s happening on Mastodon, Mark Zuckerberg has finally rolled out his long-threatened rival to all of the above, called Threads…

…which I gather is not actually named after the infamous nuclear war-themed BBC TV movie from 1984, but that hasn’t stopped an awful lot of people making that connection.

Anyway, Zuck has been promising this for a while and the timing of Threads’ release during the latest Twitter crumble is, well, interesting; I’m wondering if he’s rushed the thing into the world to take advantage of that. Certainly the BBC article I linked cites Meta as calling it an “initial version”, I’m just wondering how “initial” it is. But it seems popular; if Zuck is to be believed, Threads already has ten million signups so far… and I can kind of see why for a couple of reasons:

One, it’s not run by Oolong;
Two, it’s a lot quicker to sign up for than Mastodon, especially if you have an Instagram account already, and you don’t have to wait for someone on Bluesky to slip you a user code.

Equally, I see problems with it:

One, it is run by Zuckerberg;
Two, if you don’t Threads you can’t actually delete it without also deactivating your Instagram account (no, REALLY):

 

Three, it seems to behave in that shitty non-chronological way Instagram’s main feed does:

Four, the sheer amount of shit it wants to know about you…

…which is apparently so much they can’t offer the app to users in the EU cos it frankly contravenes EU law. I’m he’ll find a way around that, though…

Anyway, that’s Threads, I suppose… I shall be interested to see how many of those ten million people who’ve already signed up continue to stick with it. As for your humble scribe, I don’t think I shall be among them, though I’m waiting for the promised federation with Mastodon et al to be able to interact with people on Threads… assuming I can, given how many Masto servers are determined to pre-emptively block Meta from federating. Still waiting for Bluesky to come through, but I think I’m best off just here anyway…