Experts Raise Privacy Concerns As ‘Threads’ Continues To Show Massive Growth
By Movieguide® Contributor
Twitter rival Threads has already seen tremendous growth, racking up 30 million users in the first seven hours of its launch.
“Meta only needs 1 in 4 Instagram users to use Threads monthly for it to be as big as Twitter,” Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, said about the new social media platform.
Many users have been looking for an alternative to Twitter as glitches and new settings, such as a limit on how many tweets a user can read per day, have plagued the app. While there are many apps, such as Bluesky and Mastodon, who are hoping to take Twitter’s place, Forbes wrote “There are no really good alternatives [to Twitter]. Threads fits the bill.”
However, that massive growth means questions about user privacy are being raised.
Digit News reported that Threads “may collect health and fitness information, financial information, contacts, browsing history and location, all of which could be shared with advertisers” and encouraged users to adjust their privacy settings in the app.
“Threads’ content moderation strategy is yet to be ironed out,” the outlet cautioned readers. “As of now Meta has not mentioned how it plans to scale content moderation to handle the influx of new users. Meta has said its existing community guidelines from Instagram apply to Threads.”
Movieguide® previously reported on the launch of Threads:
Meta launched Threads on Wednesday, a new social media site designed to compete with Twitter.
“The vision for Threads is to create an option and friendly public space for conversation,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Threads following the launch. “We hope to take what Instagram does best and create a new experience around text, ideas, and discussing what’s on your mind.”
The new platform functions similarly to Twitter, lending itself to text-based posts, although photos and videos can also be posted. Users can reply to, quote, and repost other Threads posts, allowing for real-time conversations. The site also limits messages to 500 words or less.
Movieguide® also reported on some of the issues conservative users are facing on the platform:
Meta’s Twitter rival Threads has shown its true colors as it censors a conservative account’s post.
Threads deleted a post from Chaya Raichik’s Libs of TikTok account after she stated “non-binary isn’t real.”
“Stating facts is ‘hate speech’ on Threads,” Raichik said in a Twitter post showing her censorship.
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