Last Updated: July 06, 2023, 05:25 AM IST
United States of America (USA)
This photo, taken in New York on Wednesday, July 5, 2023, show the logo for Meta’s new app Threads, left, and that of Twitter. (AP Photo)
Threads could collect a wide range of personal information, including health, financial, contacts, browsing and search history, location data, purchases and “sensitive info”
Meta on Thursday launched Threadsa text-based alternative to Twitter, posing a significant challenge to the embattled platform owned by Elon Musk.
“Let’s do this. Welcome to Threads,” wrote Meta chief executive and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in his first post on the nascent platform, according to AFP.
Meta unveiled an app to rival Twitter, appearing to target users looking for an alternative to the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
The new app is billed as a text-based version of Meta’s photo-sharing app Instagram that the company says provides “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”
The app went live just after midnight Wednesday in the UK in Apple and Google Android app stores in more than 100 countries including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan.
Users will get a Twitter-like microblogging experience, according to screenshots provided to media, suggesting that Meta Platforms has been gearing up to directly challenge the platform after Musk’s ownership resulted in a series of changes.
In a statement, Meta said, “Our vision is that Threads will be a new app more focused on text and dialogue, modeled after what Instagram has done for photo and video.”
Posts are limited to 500 characters, which is more than Twitter’s 280-character threshold, and can include links, photos and videos up to five minutes long.
Instagram users will be able to log in with their existing user names and follow the same accounts on the new app. New users will have to set up an Instagram account.
Meta emphasized measures to keep users safe, including enforcing Instagram’s community guidelines and providing tools to control who can mention or reply to users. However, one place Threads won’t be rolled out is in the European Union, which has strict data privacy rules.
Read More: Meta’s ‘Threads’ App, a Rival of Twitter, to Hold Back Launch in Europe Due to Regulatory Concerns
Meta has informed Ireland’s Data Privacy Commission that it has no plans yet to launch Threads in the 27-nation bloc, commission spokesman Graham Doyle said. The Irish watchdog is Meta’s main privacy regulator for the EU because the company’s regional headquarters is based in Dublin.
The launch of the Threads could prove to be a fresh headache for Musk, who acquired Twitter last year for USD 44 billion.
He’s made a series of changes that have triggered backlash, the latest being daily limits on the number of tweets people can view to try to stop unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data.
He also is now requiring paid verification for users to access the online dashboard TweetDeck.
(With agency inputs)
