Meta launches Twitter rival Threads -- but not in Europe

Facebook behemoth Meta officially will launch Threads, its text-based rival to Twitter, on Wednesday -- but its release in Europe has been delayed over regulatory concerns.

Threads will be the biggest rival yet to Elon Musk-owned Twitter, which has seen a series of potential competitors emerge but not yet replace one of social media's most iconic companies, despite its epic struggles.

A holding web page said the launch of Mark Zuckerberg's Threads was advanced to 7:00 pm Eastern time (2300 GMT) after it was initailly planned for 1400 GMT on Thursday.

The app will be introduced as a spin-off of Instagram, giving it a built-in audience of more than two billion users and thus sparing it the challenge of starting from scratch.

"It's as simple as that: if an Instagram user with a large number of followers such as Kardashian or a Bieber or a Messi begins posting on Threads regularly, a new platform could quickly thrive," strategic financial analyst Brian Wieser said on Substack.

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Zuckerberg is widely understood to be taking advantage of Musk's chaotic ownership of Twitter to push out the new product, which the company hopes will become the new communication channel for celebrities, companies and politicians.

The two men are known to be bitter rivals -- and have even offered to meet each other in a fighting cage to wrestle it out.

This came after a Meta executive reportedly told employees that Threads would be like Twitter, but "sanely run."

Under Musk, Twitter has seen content moderation reduced to a minimum with glitches and rash decisions tarnishing the site's reputation with celebrities and major advertisers, many of whom have fled.

Musk hired advertising executive Linda Yaccarino to steady the ship, but she has not been spared his whimsy.

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The Tesla tycoon said last week that he was cutting access to Twitter in what he called an temporary measure to ward off AI companies from "scraping" the site to train their technology.

Musk then angered Twitter's most devoted aficionados by declaring that access to its TweetDeck product — which allows users to view a fast flow of tweets at once — would be for paying customers only.

'Quality, not quantity'

Threads owner Meta has its legion of critics too, especially in Europe, and despite Instagram's massive user base, they could slow the site's development.

The company formerly known as Facebook is criticized mainly for its handling of personal data -- its quintessential bloodline for targeted ads that help it rake in billions of dollars every quarter in profits.

According to a source close to the matter, regulatory concerns will delay the launch of Threads in the European Union, where Meta will be subject to a new law called the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which sets strict rules for the world's biggest internet companies.

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One rule restricts platforms from transferring personal data between products, as would potentially be the case between Threads and Instagram.

Meta was caught out for doing just that after it bought the messaging app WhatsApp, and European regulators will be on high alert to ensure that the company doesn't do so with Threads.

Another original idea for Threads, making it interoperable with other Twitter rivals such as Mastodon, is reportedly also on hold for now, but not abandoned.

"Soon, you'll be able to follow and interact with people on other fediverse platforms, such as Mastodon," said a screenshot from Threads, now taken down, according to Tech Crunch.

The so-called fediverse would see different platforms of all kinds and sizes enabled to communicate with one another, in a challenge to the giants.

Zizi Papacharissi, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois Chicago, said that the emerging trend for social media is more focused on creating communities and less on growth.

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"Companies are going to have to think hard about how much they want to grow in order to remain appealing to users, and by extension, successful and profitable. Users are increasingly after quality, not quantity," she warned.

Source: AFP