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Facebook's Threads is so depressing
- fullshark 3y agoTwitter is a bunch of journalists snarking about the news. Seems like threads is a bunch of Instagram celebrities using a 2nd medium for brand management. It seems like people are only there in case it takes off and that’s not going to be interesting conversation.
- blowski 3y agoIf you dismiss Twitter so easily, it’s clear you don’t have much to add. It is (was?) a lot more than “journalists snarking about the news”. Customer service, influencers, sports fans arguing, companies microblogging, bots giving updates, comedians, musicians - these are just a few things I can think of that were on Twitter.
- actionablefiber 3y agoThat's what Google+ was, too. People who already had online communities on four websites temporarily added a fifth to hedge their bets until it was clear that G+ was not destined for greatness.
- wyclif 3y agoI think you'll find that there are a large number of normies on Twitter, if you look under the hood.
- smegsicle 3y agoyou dont even need to look under the hood, you just need to know a handful of normies
- lasermatts 3y agoI joined mastodon relatively early and really enjoyed the experience. I’m a believer in the fediverse so I hope Threads takes off
- izzydata 3y agoThose two things are very contradictory. Threads taking off is the death of the fediverse in the long run.
- constantly 3y agoThis is probably true. But how long should we wait for the fediverse to get its act together? There’s a critical mass of people who want to leave Twitter and lots of pent up demand.
- izzydata 3y agoIt's been working just fine for years. The people don't want a platform they have to genuinely participate in. They want celebrities, corporations and their data to be stolen and sold to see it as a successful platform for mindlessly browsing.
- constantly 3y agoAre you implying that the fediverse failed because the builders of the main apps don’t understand the market, that they’re unwilling to give people what they want out of a platform, or something else?
- izzydata 3y agoI don't think the fediverse failed. I think the average joe doesn't sign up for Mastodon and Kbin because it doesn't have celebrities, corporations, ads and data harvesting. Celebrities and corporations needs to be paid, at least initially, to be on the platform which a decentralized platform is never going to do.
- constantly 3y agoI can confirm that when I’m shopping at WalMart and polling average Joes on why they aren’t joining Mastodon, one of the top reasons they cite is the lack of data harvesting, followed closely by the lack of ads. Perhaps the fediverse can avoid the fate you’re predicting if they add in maybe just a little data harvesting?
- prepend 3y agoThese complaints are so cringe. This looks just a stupid as twitter. Complaining about twitter sucking and threads sucking is so weird. People seem to think highly of twitter more so than it ever was.
- syspec 3y agoDoes anyone know if it is possible in Threads to only show content from people I follow?
- swlkr 3y agoit's not possible currently
- rospaya 3y agoWhat the fuck. So basically it's a very large ad for people who are already famous? Again what the fuck.
- baq 3y agommmmmmm-oney. Always be selling. Who do you sell Threads to?
- tw04 3y ago>What the fuck. So basically it's a very large ad for people who are already famous? Again what the fuck. I'm sure the Twitter limit debacle had them ship it before it was completely ready. They've already said that's actively in the works. It's not an intentional design decision, it's a feature that's not ready.
- oneeyedpigeon 3y agoSounds like they might have overplayed their hand. If it's seriously as bad as not even having a feed, surely people are going to get bored and dump it - that first impression is pretty important right? Signing up is one thing, the migration actively needs usage, though.
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- nickthegreek 3y agoI made an account, but I'm not really using the service as its missing 2 big things for me. A feed of only those I follow and hashtags.
- rvz 3y ago> But if not, uh, I guess you can follow me on Threads. All that melodrama, complaining and whining in the blog post and then ends up using Threads. Quite amusing to read.
- Angostura 3y agoNice bit of polemic. but essentially content-free.
- jay_kyburz 3y agoI enjoyed the read. Chucked a few times. Some of the one liners are quite subtle.
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- barbariangrunge 3y agoOne advantage of threads over Facebook is that with threads there’s no expectation of privacy for people to get confused about. That’s refreshing
- muglug 3y agoMaybe it's just me, but I remember a time where online defaulted to private and anonymous. facebook.com shifted that paradigm. Making people's conversations with friends as public as possible (via the news feed) turned out to be a fantastic way to incentivise more of that behaviour. From there it was a short leap to apps like Venmo, where your monetary transactions are public by default. If PayPal had defaulted to public transactions upon launch a decade earlier people would have spurned it.
- tredre3 3y agoI remember when online defaulted to anonymous, but I don't remember it ever being very private? Most forums or chat systems that predate facebook were public by default, with the users full history in plain view. I suppose posting photos of yourself or your kids publicly wasn't that common prior to facebook, though.
- tlow 3y agoThreads is an interesting move because of the context. However, I believe that Facebook will continue to alienate a large segment of its users through its aggressive bias. You can't please everyone, but simply censoring and banning one political side is not a viable approach. As we saw with the Twitter files this ultimately snowballs, creating a larger problem that will resurface. I'm not optimistic about the Threads product, but I think its failure will be a positive overall impact on public discourse. Facebook isn't our friend. Zuck doesn't want a "more friendly place" he wants censorship and monetization.
- runamok 3y ago> but simply censoring and banning one political side is not a viable approach Citation needed. There are tons of claims but from what I can see not a lot of proof. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/02/01/censorship-conservatives-trump-facebook-twitter-youtube/4316155001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/02/01/censorship-co...
- bhouston 3y agoSince you mention it, what part of the Twitter files was most damning? Can you share that part?
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- rblatz 3y agoI don’t know, if someone keeps posting lies and then Facebook decides to say you this dude is a liar. Feels pretty fair, sorry one side decided lies are core to their political identity. Edit: it’s not one side, it’s a small minority of loud mouthed assholes.
- aydyn 3y ago> it’s a small minority of loud mouthed assholes. Ah I see you understand that intimately.
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- Philip-J-Fry 3y agoThreads is an MVP to get people who are fed up with Twitter. It works and they're committed to improving it. I don't think Threads will have the same fate as other Facebook/Meta products simply because the sign up process is so painless. If you use Instagram (which like 1bn+ people do) then signing up just means downloading the app and pressing a couple of buttons. So barrier of entry is extremely low and Instagram is still popular with young people. Facebook was forgotten by young people already in 2012, so Facebook Poke was not really going to compete. I don't think you can draw parallels there. I'm excited to see if they can innovate in the space. I don't really see Zuckerberg as a bad figure.
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- davedx 3y agoSource that 1B people use Instagram?
- fhhhhssyyeyii 3y agoTwo billion as of 10/22 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-26/meta-s-instagram-users-reach-2-billion-closing-in-on-facebook https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-26/meta-s-in...
- davedx 3y agoHoly crap.
- baq 3y agoI don’t have an instagram account and don’t plan on having one. My Facebook account is basically dormant. Threads would be interesting in any way at all if you could use a WhatsApp account for it. Maybe.
- pasttense01 3y agoActually there are currently over 2.35 billion monthly active Instagram users. Instagram achieved the 2 billion mark in the 3rd quarter of 2021, and it is estimated to reach over 2.5 billion MAUs by the end of 2023. https://www.demandsage.com/instagram-statistics/ https://www.demandsage.com/instagram-statistics/
- atleastoptimal 3y agoHis main point is that it is forced and artificial. One vague heuristic a lot of people consider is the value of a social network depends on its "weird" subcultures. I feel however everything is far more sanitized and corporate friendly now. I really can't imagine a fun, weird subculture forming on threads.
- wyclif 3y agoYep, Twitter has many "weird subculture" communities where people make obscure references, have their own values and in-jokes, &c. It does feel like these newer platforms are so artificial and cleaned up, and just so right-on and politically correct.
- DougN7 3y agoSurely it will take more than the few hours the platform has been open for these groups to form? “And don’t call me Shirley!” :)
- interstice 3y agoAt the moment there is no discovery or privacy to speak of, just most popular thing at top. A smart thing to do could be topics or rooms since there's a whole other market to be captured there right now.
- cholantesh 3y agoI'm not going to sign up but like...has he seen Linkedin recently?
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- 1270018080 3y agoThreads has such a feigned positivity feeling to it. It's uncomfortable. Like the entire app is an HR cultural video. I'm sure the influencers they poached to the app were given a list of threads to post like "What's an inspiration quote you guys like?" or "What books have you read recently?" Of course this is all intentional since the end goal is just placating advertisers when they eventually add ads to the feed. Maybe when Meta is done paying people off to post fake things the real culture will make it through.
- Bukhmanizer 3y agoI think you can tell a lot about the author based on the fact that they think Bluesky is “free flowing and authentic”
- foogazi 3y agoI don’t think I want an invite anymore
- type0 3y ago> Like a $19 turkey sandwich at an airport What's wrong with $19 turkey sandwich, is delicatessen 25€ turkey sandwich better?
- jrflowers 3y agoWait do you think that food is cheaper inside of airports than it is outside of them?
- brvsft 3y ago> Mark “My other platform enabled a literal genocide” Zuckerberg Into the garbage bin it goes.
- paganel 3y agoYeah, this feels exactly like the Google+ launch. And of course that the thread got flagged, for whatever reason.
- version_five 3y ago> It’s better than Twitter, of course, which has Berlin 1937-vibes. Other than giving himself away as a hyperbolic partisan ass, the rest of the article was really funny. I said something similar about the metaverse: it's not really possible to build a community at scale out of nothing like this. Organic growth is what makes something authentic, if you just plop down a multi-million user new community, it gets all of the problems or a big platform without any of the entrenched good stuff that made it popular. It will be interesting to see if it's possible to convert, I doubt it because it will require a patience and stubbornness that Meta has never shown.
- rbalicki 3y agoThis was an entertainingly written piece. Threads, as an MVP, does not yet have the ability to see only content from those you follow. That hardly means it won't. Already, activity from those you follow shows up first in your feed, so TBH it's a pretty good experience until you run out of followees' content. It's extremely premature to write it off.
- thunky 3y ago> Threads, as an MVP, > It's extremely premature to write it off Meta isn't exactly a startup. I think it's fair to hold them to a high standard.
- foogazi 3y agoOne the first day ? I don’t think that feature is worth delaying the launch
- thunky 3y agoIt's not like they built the app in one day. Anecdotally, many are trying the app, realizing it's half baked (for various reasons), and dropping it right then and there. They only tried it because they were curious and now they know. You only get one chance to make a first impression. Meta is a 730 billion dollar company so seems like they should be able to do better.
- somethoughts 3y agoThreads seems like a great example of commoditize your complement.[1] If you can start with the premise that the primary paying audience for both Twitter and Instagram are advertisers then the value Threads provides to Meta is to provide an additional feature bundle to those advertisers. Basically: "Hey look Mr. Brand Advertiser, included in your $999 a month Instagram ad subscription, you now get access to Threads (our Twitter clone) with 1K Thread ad impressions bundled in for free - for a limited time only." [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
- cardy31 3y ago> Mark “My other platform enabled a literal genocide” Zuckerberg Can everyone agree to refer to Zuck like this from now on?
- can16358p 3y agoNot a fan of Threads, but even less of a fan of Twitter. So I'd personally want Threads to succeed. Everything about Twitter is broken especially in the recent months. I'm not saying Threads is good, but Threads at least has a chance not to be as bad as Twitter. Also fediverse support in the future is a huge plus.
- Ameo 3y agoThe fact that Threads doesn't even work on desktop is enough to disqualify it from ever being used for "serious" use-cases in my opinion. If nothing else, it's enough to make it unusable for personally. The fact that the advertised Fediverse integration doesn't even exist in the current version is very funny to me as well. I feel like it will find its niche with people who feel comfortable on Instagram, but it certainly doesn't come close to replacing Twitter for me.
- phmqk76 3y agoThreads has been out for… one full day? Maybe the histrionics are premature? Maybe the everyone-has-an-opinion-and-is-therefore-a-pundit motif can take one day off to let a new product breathe?
- kcplate 3y agoI can’t wait for it to be filled with 75/25 advertising to social post ratio.