One surefire way to go viral on Threads—the Meta-owned Instagram-spinoff social network with more than 200 million users—is to ask a ridiculous question that enrages your followers so much, they just have to chime in to answer you, mock you, or berate you. When it first launched last summer, Threads …
Read More »No, 'Leave the World Behind' and 'Civil War' Aren’t Happening Before Your Eyes
Several people are typing, and they’re all saying Netflix’s Leave the World Behind is wildly prescient. The movie, directed by Sam Esmail, opens on a world where communication has been knocked out following a cyberattack. And earlier this week, when nearly all of Meta’s platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Threads—went down, people took …
Read More »Facebook, Instagram, and Threads Are Coming Back Online After a 2-Hour Outage
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg used to describe his company’s mission as “making the world more open and connected.” Tuesday it did the opposite, as nearly all of Meta’s social platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Messenger, experienced widespread outages around the globe for around two hours. Some people found …
Read More »Meta Will Crack Down on AI-Generated Fakes—but Leave Plenty Undetected
Meta, like other leading tech companies, has spent the past year promising to speed up deployment of generative artificial intelligence. Today it acknowledged it must also respond to the technology’s hazards, announcing an expanded policy of tagging AI-generated images posted to Facebook, Instagram, and Threads with warning labels to inform …
Read More »What Meta’s Fediverse Plans Mean for Threads Users
Rachel Lambert, a product manager at Meta, started her company’s journey towards interoperability by breaking Adam Mosseri’s Threads account. In December, Meta activated a test where users could follow the head of Instagram’s Threads feed on an open-source social media platform, Mastodon. But when users tried to view Mosseri’s posts …
Read More »Your ‘Dear Algorithm’ Post on Threads Doesn’t Work
Earlier this week Amanda McCellon, a city government worker and community organizer in the greater Oklahoma City metropolitical area, finally decided to pray to the algorithm. “Dear Algorithm,” began her post on Threads, Meta’s newish Twitter clone. From there, McCellon asked to be connected with 10 topics and like-minded folks …
Read More »The New Era of Social Media Looks as Bad for Privacy as the Last One
When Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, experts warned that his proposed changes—including less content moderation and a subscription-based verification system—would lead to an exodus of users and advertisers. A year later, those predictions have largely borne out. Advertising revenue on the platform has declined 55 percent since …
Read More »Threads Is Rolling Out on the Web. That Just Might Save It
Threads, the text-based social network that Meta recently launched as part of Instagram, is finally on the web. Earlier this week, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg shared that Threads for the web would be “rolling out over the next few days.” That rollout has begun; some users already have access …
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