Threads is a new app from Meta designed as a text-based offshoot of Instagram. If this sounds like another competitor taking advantage of Twitter’s turmoil like Bluesky, Mastodon, or Post, you’ve got the right idea. The existence of the app and the service was first revealed a few months ago and has been tested with many celebrities, brands and influencers. You can download the Threads app from the App Store, where a pre-order placeholder has been available for a few days.
The app is designed to get a boost from one of Meta’s most popular services, Instagram, with strong integration between the two. Threads is listed as “an Instagram app” in its titles on app stores, and users will log in with Instagram accounts, where they can then follow all the accounts they follow on Instagram very easily. If you are verified on Instagram, this will continue as well.
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You’ll be able to post text up to 500 characters – shorter than Twitter’s new limits but much longer than the old 280 character limit – as well as photos, links and videos up to 5 minutes long .
Confidentiality and protocols
While the app and service are now open to the public, it’s worth pointing out that the launch in 100 countries does not include any within the European Union. Meta has been at odds with the EU over privacy laws for some time now, and it looks like Threads won’t meet EU requirements there.
A quick look at the privacy label of apps in the App Store should tell you why: Instagram (i.e. Meta) is taking over tons data that can be linked to you, including obvious things like usage data and diagnostics, but also financial information, contact information, purchase history, health and fitness data physics, etc Apple has safeguards in place to make some of this stuff opt-in, but suffice it to say that Threads focuses on user tracking, perhaps even more so than most major social media networks.
Foundry
Meta promised to support the ActivityPub protocol, the same decentralized networking protocol used by Mastodon. Instagram manager Adam Mosseri explained that it was happening, but not in time for launch, saying, “We weren’t able to finish it for launch given a number of the complications that come with a decentralized network. , but it happens.” You may one day use Theads to access the “fediverse”, but for now, Threads is exactly what it claims to be: “an Instagram app”.
