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Threads isn’t for news and politics, says Instagram’s boss
- jmclnx 3y ago>Threads isn’t for news I wonder if this is for the new Canadian Law meta and google needs to deal with. As for politics, will that mean no political ads from people running for office ?
- ch4s3 3y ago> As for politics, will that mean no political ads from people running for office ? That's actually kind of compelling. When twitter was just random weirdos and comedians it was a lot more enjoyable.
- JimtheCoder 3y ago"I wonder if this is for the new Canadian Law meta and google needs to deal with." You really think Meta is sweating over what Canada thinks? (Am Canadian)
- codetrotter 3y agoIt’s not just Canada. Other countries have been threatening similar laws before, and more countries will do so as well in the future. Meta knows this. Taking that into account is good. Also, they want to differentiate this Thread place from other places. Saying that news is not the point is a good idea I think. Even though I don’t like Meta and don’t want them to succeed.
- housemusicfan 3y agoThey might as well deploy an orange and tan stylesheet while they're at it.
- 1583 3y agousers get to decide that
- Levitz 3y agoNot really. They can delete whatever they want.
- ahahahahah 3y agoSure, they could. But they've been explicit that these will be allowed, they just aren't encouraging it or explicitly chasing after those verticals.
- orange_joe 3y agoWatch the algo push those posts into the dirt. People talk about these things because they get airtime, they probably won’t post hyper partisan hot takes if they’re punished for it.
- rumblerock 3y agoI'd rather a more conservative approach than copy+pasting the vitriol and polarization of Twitter onto a new platform. And it's a smart move to make it friendlier to users who were uninterested in Twitter because of this dominant characteristic. Of course, the journalists are up in arms, but the relationship between incendiary news / Tweets and its influence on journalistic narratives reported on is a big structural risk. I think of it like separation of prop trading firms and banks, rather than having an unenforced Chinese wall between them.
- ljm 3y agoI'm no fan of Meta/FB because of their attitude to privacy and their own brand of toxic social media on Facebook but it's hard to argue against the approach taken with the launch here. I don't believe the approach is conservative in as much as it's necessary product development: you have to know your audience, your market, and by virtue that means you know what you aren't going to cater for. No hard news, no divisive politics, no journalistic commentary? Totally fair and I imagine many will find that refreshing; same reason why people come on HN for the technical niche except this time it's optimised for Instagrammers and influencers. Musk made his own play with Twitter in a similar vein by choosing what audience he preferred to cater to and, in effect, scored an own goal of epic proportions. A truly ludicrous display given Twitter's ubiquity before he took the reins.
- jupp0r 3y agoThe reason people used to love and now hate Twitter is moderation and other product decisions. People like the topics discussed on Twitter in general.
- TechnicolorByte 3y ago> The goal isn't to replace Twitter. The goal is to create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less angry place for conversations, but not all of Twitter. So only the super PC, brand friendly stuff? Guess I shouldn’t be surprised given it’s Meta but disappointing if true. How can you have a public square without fostering news and political niches? That doesn’t mean you have to shove it in everyone’s feeds like Elon’s Twitter. So it really will just be instagram with a text focus then. Was hoping all the influencer/celeb/brand focus early on was just a result of early app launch and no following feed yet.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> How can you have a public square without fostering news and political niches Most people in most public squares aren’t engaging in civic discourse. They’re bantering and conversing and trading. With Reddit and Twitter simultaneously crapping the bed, there’s a valid niche for that sort of square on the internet. We still need a public square for civic discourse. But it’s clear the current model optimises for bloviation and posturing. Maybe there’s a better model than every person their own broadcaster.
- goodbyesf 3y ago> They’re bantering and conversing and trading. What do you think is happening on the internet or social media? Most of the internet or social media is non-political and non-news related. > Maybe there’s a better model than every person their own broadcaster. You are blaming 'every person' when the toxicity of news and politics is news and politics itself. It's the toxic mainstream news and politicians that are the problem. Not 'every person'.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- DelightOne 3y agoHow is that possible without becoming an echo chamber? I believe it won't happen without categorization in question/answer/redirect/objection + grouping into opinion-direction per group to curtail baseless attacks and attempts at homogenization to "be right". Everyone can be right in their own way anyway, just formalize it.
- tomohawk 3y agoObviously. It's for collecting valuable information and manipulating opinion.
- jrflowers 3y agoI’m so glad that there’s a website where we can finally see the Wendy’s brand account riff with Heinz about promotional Is It Cake? posts or whatever other thing the masses are clamoring to read
- paxys 3y agoFunny because there isn't actually a website. You get to do it on an app and let them collect every bit of data about you in the process.
- frou_dh 3y agoHaha, I've always found it uniquely horrifying to see corporate accounts on Twitter "banter" with each other.
- munificent 3y agoIt always makes me sad, but then I remember that there are so few other jobs around for Millenials so I don't begrudge them doing it.
- tsol 3y agoThat's what they said about Facebook
- jaredwiener 3y agoFWIW, I posted this Show HN yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36622035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36622035 We're building forth.news, which is sort of the exact opposite of this view point. We're only news. Only journalists post, so theres no hate speech, no spam, and no misinfo. If you want to get headlines, and you want to curate your own feed, check out https://www.forth.news https://www.forth.news
- suddenclarity 3y ago> Only journalists post, so theres no hate speech, no spam, and no misinfo. This is such a bad take that you actually made me laugh out loud. Not trying to be negative but I believe you need to discuss the idea with real people before going all-in. There are plenty of misinformation in any "legit" newspaper. Journalist also isn't a protected title in a lot of countries so anyone can call themselves a journalist. It doesn't automatically make your claims true. On the contrary, a lot of people go into journalism because they are passionate about certain topics, similar to activists.
- jaredwiener 3y agoWe have an editorial policy that defines how we see journalists and reporting, and what is and isn't allowed: https://www.forth.news/docs/editorial https://www.forth.news/docs/editorial I know journalism has a bad rap in some circles, but most reporters are genuinely trying to share real stories.
- jaredwiener 3y ago[flagged]
- ahahahahah 3y agoYou seem to have missed the point. You claimed that it was due to only having journalists that you wouldn't have hate speech or misinfo. Except many journalists spew that shit constantly. If you aren't having those things its not due to the fact that journalists are in some way above them, it's because of something else you are doing. In fact, I would consider your original claim to be "misinfo", so I hope you aren't spreading it on your fancy new site.
- ypeterholmes 3y agoGood luck policing what people decide to talk about...
- Hamuko 3y agoIt's not really that hard. There's only an algorithmic timeline, so they can just downrank all the shit they don't want there. Just downrank all posters who frequently use terms such as "Biden", "Trump", "White House", "Supreme Court", "the midterm election" etc. and you'll have suppressed it.
- zaphos 3y agoThey're just saying they won't encourage news/politics, not that they'll police them off: > "Politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads - they have on Instagram as well to some extent - but we're not going to do anything to encourage those verticals."
- roody15 3y agoWhat exactly is threads for? Not for sharing interesting headlines? I am not sure what's is purpose really is and how it differs from Instagram and Facebook. Is it just to show me celebrity one liners? Show me obvious product placements.. or heavily promoted movies?
- coldcode 3y agoAs an artist its totally pointless, no hashtags mean no discoverability. Intagram itself is overrun with pointless AI so forget anyone seeing your work. there. This seems barely a WIP anyway, they only released it because of Twitter imploding. I wonder how many people are working on this barebones implementation.
- Zarkonnen 3y agoTrue, it's for Engaging With Brands and data mining.
- colesantiago 3y agoThreads is refreshing, I see that Mastodon on the other hand has the toxic news and politics that Threads is avoiding. When Threads federates with Mastodon, we will see the news and politics they are trying to avoid. But for now: > Threads isn’t for news We should assume it is for data collection for Meta, otherwise why has it not launched in the EU?
- Hamuko 3y agoIs there a complete list of things that Threads isn't for? Besides news and politics, nudity and sexual activity are also a no-go.
- lapcat 3y ago> There are more than enough amazing communities – sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment, etc – to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news. So it's literally nothing more than text-based Instagram. If "The goal isn't to replace Twitter", then what's the point, and why rush the launch, with a ton of missing features, just to take advantage of Twitter's latest problems? ("This was a lot more of a yolo launch than anything we've done in a long while." https://www.threads.net/t/CuZpfirN81T https://www.threads.net/t/CuZpfirN81T)
- majani 3y agoIf this is a YOLO launch, then Facebook have scale and moderation down to a science now. Hats off, those were very hard challenges in the early days of web 2.0
- ribosometronome 3y ago> sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment As if these industries aren't often political
- trowawee 3y agoRight?! This is the dumbest bit from a pretty dumb statement. Politics is just people working out how they're going to interact with each other. There's no way to cordon that off from anything else. You can certainly pretend that those industries don't interact with politics, but that's just another form of politics.
- nicce 3y ago> If "The goal isn't to replace Twitter", then what's the point, and why rush the launch, with a ton of missing features, just to take advantage of Twitter's latest problems? ("This was a lot more of a yolo launch than anything we've done in a long while It is just a narrative to counter Twitter’s lawsuit. https://www.npr.org/2023/07/07/1186367564/threads-meta-twitter-lawsuit https://www.npr.org/2023/07/07/1186367564/threads-meta-twitt...
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- hnboredhn 3y agoI almost feel like it is competing more with FB than anything, which could possibly work. None of my friends use Facebook but presumably there is still a need for people to ask what restaurants or good or if anyone is available to be a babysitter? People can obviously post on their stories - but I think there is something about a photo based medium that makes some people reluctant to post at all or slide into other people's DMs.
- paxys 3y agoYou have to spend 5 minutes on Threads to see it for what it is – an extension of Instagram full of brands, celebrities and influencers. That isn't in itself a good or bad thing, just what it is. One potential saving grace is the future ActivityPub support that will let you access Mastadon and the rest of the Fediverse from the Threads app, but it remains to be seen how they actually implement it.
- majani 3y agoYup. Also there's a LOT of influencers who missed the organic growth phase of Twitter and this is their chance to make up for missing out. Such people are going to be power users for sure
- rochak 3y agoSo, basically everything I despise about. Got it. Would stay away from it with a ten feet pole.
- Freak_NL 3y agoActivityPub seems unlikely if they won't even offer a webapp.
- jupp0r 3y agoIt will come with the same limits that ActivityPub comes with right now (lack of search) and not be super useful for the same reasons.
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- JimtheCoder 3y agoTrying to prevent humans from acting like humans. This is a bold strategy - let's see how it works out...
- celtoid 3y agoThat's most likely why Threads doesn't use hashtags or has a search function for words and phrases. It keeps those pesky activists from boosting the message.
- jacooper 3y agoThey are supposedly coming "soon".
- outside1234 3y agoOoof - what?!?
- notquitehuman 3y agoIf it allows outrage pornographers to accrue wealth or notoriety, then it’ll be used news and politics.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- micromacrofoot 3y agoWhy do companies think they can control this? you can call just about anything news and politics!
- wilg 3y agoWild that people are instantly kneejerking about this, news and politics on social is such a tire fire, but it seems like a lot of people can't parse that out from news and politics also being important.
- jupp0r 3y agoGreat, just don't talk about anything interesting or profound on our platform.
- kbelder 3y agoPolitical Twitter posts are significantly less profound than posts about... Pokemon? Clouds? A new color of sock? Yeah, pretty much everything.
- ahahahahah 3y agoThat's a misrepresentation of the position. They've pretty explicitly said that they aren't going to do anything against these topics, just that they aren't going to court them like they had in the past.
- Semiapies 3y agoThis sort of delusion/pretense isn't a good sign.