Elon's Twitter

[Dave_LF]

The prescience of that film makes me think they had an ex-SpaceX employee on staff...

[Jude]

So, those of you in the know about social media, can you tell me if this is a big deal or a big fat nothingburger?

Meta launches Threads, a social media platform to rival Twitter

Meta launched its microblogging app Threads on Thursday, the latest among several platforms that have been designed to rival Twitter as users jump ship from the beleaguered social media site.

The company behind Instagram and Facebook pitched Threads as an app that will do for text and dialogue what Instagram did for photos and video.

"There should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn't nailed it. Hopefully we will," Meta CEO Zuckerberg said on Threads, where he now has a million followers.

Millions of people signed up for the app within hours of its launch, according to the company. That rush is helped by the fact that users log into a Threads account using their Instagram username and password, lending the new platform a built-in user base. Users can also import their Instagram followers list to Threads.

Threads also does not have hashtags and keyword search functions, nor a direct messaging function, a following feed or desktop version. Some of these features will be added, but "it will take time," Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri wrote in a thread.

Twitter has been bleeding users and advertisers after a series of decisions by CEO Elon Musk, including reinstating banned accounts, laying off staff and, most recently, imposing a rate limit that restricts the number of posts non-premium users can read daily.

"[Meta is] getting crackdowns in the EU, lawsuits in the U.S. around ... privacy things and misinformation. So they're really looking for how do they expand and grow," Lachman said.

While the app is available to download in Canada, the company is still assessing how the federal Online News Act, or Bill C-18, will impact the ability of users in this country to view news stories on the platform, a spokesperson told CBC News.

[Frelga]

I think Facebook is the only one with a realistic chance to produce a competitor to Twitter. A major social network just takes a lot to run.

But Threads currently sounds like a privacy nightmare. It hoovers up your private information from all your Facebook-linked profiles, including Instagram, even if you would prefer to keep them separate.

It also, like your quotes show, doesn't have a way to just see the posts from the people you follow, in the chronological order, and relies on the algorithm instead. That alone is enough to be a no from me.

And not having Europeans on it means, among other things, losing a lot of news sources for Ukraine.

In other news, the post limit has quietly gone away.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Out of the billionaire frying pan and into the billionaire fire.

[narya]

Meta will have it all, eventually. What happens when they monopolize all free speech?

[RoseMorninStar]

So it appears Zuck took Elon up on that cage match.. in a different form.

[Frelga]

I am hearing that if you register on Threads with a display name (like Frelga), it will scrape up your legal name and put it up on display. This may be limited to the name used somewhere else on Meta, like Instagram or Facebook, but it's hard to tell.

It also appears to combine your followers from all sources, even if you'd prefer to keep them separate.

*sigh*

I just want Google+ back.

[Jude]

Eleanor Morton is spot on:

[Frelga]

Excellence in headline writing.

Elon Musk Predicts Level 4 Or 5 Full Self-Driving ‘Later This Year’ For the Tenth Year In A Row

Based on the fact that I just saw a video of a self-driving Tesla blowing through the stop sign and almost getting into a 3 car pileup (the driver hit the brakes), I am going to predict that it won't happen this year, either.

[Dave_LF]

Backup link:
https://t.co/mlzGT4RiiH

[River]

Spoiler about that Twitter thread:

Hidden text.

Social media is all Gollum. Except LinkedIn is the Mouth of Sauron, NextDoor is Ungoliant, and Quora is the Army of the Dead. And the thread writer's newsletter is Sméagol.

[Jude]

So is HoF Sam?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[Frelga]

The last of the Ringbearers.

[RoseMorninStar]

Sam is the best

[Dave_LF]

Speaking of Meta, for all the (highly credible) talk about the shady tricks they pull to hoover up as much of your personal data as they can get, based on the suggested posts it shows me, Facebook believes I'm really into classic cars, car repair, country living, and farming. All the info they have on me, and they're still basing their decisions on a/s/l...

And glurge. Evidently the average person with my demographic info is a huge fan of glurge. I am not happy to learn this.

[Jude]

In case you missed the rest of this thread, here's Ryan George to get you all caught up in five minutes:

[RoseMorninStar]

[Frelga]

Yeah, that's 100% accurate while covering about 16% of the magnitude of the clusterduck.

Meanwhile, Musk, with the gravitas befitting a successful entrepreneur and a wealthy man of the world, called Zuckerberg a cuck and challenged him to a dick measuring contest. An account probably not belonging to Zuck but pretending to be him, but who knows because there is no verification anymore, responded with the reminder that unlike Musk, Zuck is still married and all his children speak to him.

[RoseMorninStar]

And glurge. Evidently the average person with my demographic info is a huge fan of glurge. I am not happy to learn this.

I'd never heard the term glurge before so I had to look it up. Interesting.