Meta’s Thread,  New Twitter Competitor Draws Privacy Concerns

Meta plans to release its new Twitter competitor, Threads, on July 6, just days after Twitter’s “rate limit” debacle, which momentarily limited the number of posts users could peruse per day.

Despite a possibly well-timed release, the app appears to have received little attention, at least from Twitter’s crypto-savvy community. Concerns have been expressed regarding data mining and privacy concerns, and there is skepticism that the standalone app will survive.

Screenshot of Threads’ listing on the App Store. Source: Apple

Tiffany Fong, a crypto Twitter influencer with 66,600 followers, said she had never heard of Threads and added, “I have no idea what the Meta alternative is.”

Fong’s Instagram account is active and has 10,400 followers. Over 87% of the 125 respondents to an ongoing Twitter poll by crypto influencer Kyle Chassé, a self-proclaimed “Bitcoin and crypto OG,” support “Team Twitter” over “Team Meta.”

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey drew attention to the Threads app’s privacy policy, which indicated that Instagram Inc., the app’s developer, would have access to a vast array of user data, including financial information and identifiers.

According to researchers who responded to Dorsey’s post, Twitter has nearly identical permissions and accumulates similar data as Threads.

Others have raised concerns about the app’s potential longevity, given that Meta’s previous standalone app deployments were either discontinued or had their features incorporated into other products.

“What Meta doesn’t want you to remember is that they shut down Threads in December 2021, after shutting down another standalone app called Direct,” said Nick St. Pierre, a Twitter user who discusses developments in artificial intelligence.

“They have a history of releasing standalone apps for attention, shutting them down, then rolling the features into [Instagram].”

Meta’s anticipated introduction of Threads would occur just days after Twitter’s rate limit debacle, which has temporarily limited the number of posts a user can view per day.

Threads will import Instagram users’ followers and following listings, eliminating the need for users to start from zero. A company spokesperson stated earlier this year that the standalone Threads app would support ActivityPub, the decentralized social networking protocol that powers Twitter competitor Mastodon.

Mastodon, a decentralized Twitter competitor, has experienced a recent increase in activity and active users since Twitter imposed its read restrictions.