Zuckerberg launches Threads, creates competition for Twitter

Threads is a new social media app created by Mark Zuckerberg’s team, who own’s Meta. Threads allows you to text and share public conversations. More than 100 million people and counting have signed up for it since its debut on July 5.

Threads has created so much upheaval that Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk, has threatened to sue over it. So what is Threads, how does it work, what about the viability of a lawsuit, do we need another social media app and what is the future of social media?

“Twitter, when acquired by Elon Musk, laid off about 80% of its workforce,” said Jennifer Maggiore, CEO of the marketing firm Catalyst Cos. “That included content moderators, so we’re seeing a rise in a lot more abusive behavior being tolerated there. They began rate-limiting, which means users have a limit on the number of tweets they can read in a day. There’s been a lot of confusion on verification, and Threads really leveraged that timing while Twitter’s had these issues.”

Threads has a larger content moderation team, and the same policies that Meta uses for Facebook and Instagram are being applied on the new social media platform as well. Maggiore believes the stronger moderation makes Threads a more open and safe platform than Twitter at the moment.

A large criticism of Twitter since Musk has taken over has been the growing political divide between the right and left. Research found from May of 2020 to May of 2021, a third of the tweets sent out were related to politics. Maggiore believes political discourse on Threads will be far less hostile than what is currently happening on Twitter.

“I think for people who aren’t interested in some of that hostile rhetoric, they are definitely moving over to Threads,” said Maggiore.