The Pull of Threads, Zuckerberg’s Answer to Twitter

Last Thursday, I received some new Instagram notifications that marked a departure from the usual, inviting me to pay attention. The photo-based app was telling me that some of my friends had started posting on Threads.

They made me look: Meta’s algorithms correctly determined the two people in my network who would compel me, a creature of habit, to entertain something new. People I care about and trust, but who also intrigue because they don’t figure prominently in my daily life. One, of course, is an ex-boyfriend. How did Meta know? We barely talk. But the algorithms are strong, and sometimes they seem to understand more about us than we are willing to admit to ourselves.

To create buzz for a new social media platform inside the longtime personal networks of an older, familiar one was a clever play by Meta, and the timing was interesting. The Silicon Valley tech conglomerate owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, and last month stated its intention to remove news from its social platforms rather than pay into a legislated plan to flow some of the corporation’s massive profits back into the Canadian journalism economy that its advertising model disrupted. Meta’s move could dramatically change how citizens receive information.

As Canadians grappled with this grim reality, it seemed strategic for Meta to return a few weeks later with Threads, a distracting summer banger for the masses.

Threads launched on July 5, just in time for the sprawling heat of the season to set in and leave us sweatily reaching for our phones in search of the amorphous reprieve that only social media can provide.

I wasn’t entirely sure if I wanted to sign up, but I was in before I knew it. It was almost too easy; the seamless process of joining Threads seemed to preclude any second-guessing. I didn’t need to create a new profile or user name, mine my phone for a photo, or wonder who else I might find in the app.

All I did was tap on a blue button in Instagram, and Threads did the rest. I slipped through an open door and arrived at a party in a new city where everyone was improbably familiar to me. The gang was all there: real-life friends, casual acquaintances, artists, public figures, random memelords.

This jolt of novelty (but crucially, nothing too experimental) proved to be a frothy distraction. I was one of more than 70 million people who signed up to Threads by the end of its first two days live.

The immediate appeal of Threads to me, and likely to many, is the way people have been interacting with the platform, especially in the context of what we’ve all seen elsewhere on social media.

Twitter, now in full meltdown, has been widely panned and rightfully scrutinized throughout the year Elon Musk barrelled forth as its CEO until June 2023. This was foregrounded in part, as Politico suggests, by Donald Trump’s entire presidency, which Trump himself documented on Twitter to grotesque effect. The itch for a replacement had been in play for some time.

There’s been Mastodon and Bluesky, but neither have compared to Threads’ blast radius. Meta snapped the puck by marketing a friendly, breezy space for the open exchange of ideas, facilitating easy membership through users of an app loved for its smartphone photos of homecooked meals and tasteful interiors, children and pets, sunsets and flora.

If Twitter was the realm of polemicists and iconoclasts, Instagram was a tidal wave of hygge. Now there’s Threads, a late-stage attempt to bring the two together.

The text-based, micro-blogging capabilities of Threads bore such a strong, immediate resemblance to Twitter that Musk’s personal lawyer sent a cease-and-desist letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the day that Threads launched.

Not all Threads users may be aware of this letter and a host of other rising tensions between Musk and Zuckerberg, as the app seems to be designed for ease. Membership is free, sure. But what’s the cost?

Amidst the chipper tone, there’s a darkness in Threads, a shared sense of understanding that what feels like a party is also, on some level, an end-times grasp towards community that won’t save us. All the self-referential jokes that highlight the dissonance between users’ simultaneous embrace and suspicion of the new platform speak to that.

I can also see how refreshing Threads may be to people who have been professionally using Twitter for years. How alluring to jump onto a new platform that holds a promise of liberation from the grind of personal brand curation. Threads, at least for now, offers a chance to be silly, to formulate a digital identity outside of a professional role.

But the longer I stay on the platform — and it’s only been, what, 72 hours — Threads becomes more familiar, and it seems hollower. More of my friends are signing up. Journalists are here, sharing their work. Perhaps part of the appeal at this point is the sense of reunion in an unfamiliar place.

The frictionless joy that Zuckerberg seems to espouse and profit from is here too. For now on Threads, few things are offensive. Many things seem possible. And that, to me, is unsustainable.

I wonder how or if Zuckerberg factors this in. “The vision for Threads,” he posted to the platform the day of its launch, “is to create an open and friendly public space for conversation. We hope to take what Instagram does best and create a new experience around text, ideas and discussing what’s on your mind. The world needs a friendly public space for conversation. If we do this well, then Threads can be that space. We’re going to stay focused on that as our north star.”

I’m often struck by how Zuckerberg’s public persona seems maddeningly, almost calculatingly, naive. I wonder if he or his people consider the degree to which everything is political, even if we don’t experience it as such.

It’s a dystopian time in media and late capitalism. We’ll live under the influence of Zuck and Musk for a long time, many of us continuing to use their busted tools to express ourselves and engage democratically, to know others and be known.

If the solution to this all was as simple as signing out or deleting an account, I think more of us would have done so by now. Including me. And maybe here’s where I’m naive. I haven’t opted out of social media for the same reasons why I vote in every election, why my personal sense of duty has cost me. I would rather participate, however imperfectly, than burn the whole house down.

But as I tangle with Threads, I’ll never forget who’s holding the strings.