this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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I don't think that's true. You can sign up using your Instagram account, but I don't think it happens automatically. Instagram has 1.4B active users for reference.
It creates shadow placeholder profiles. You need to "sign up" but it's more like activating your threads profile rather than making a new account since it uses the same account database as Instagram. When I joined, it let me follow all of the people I follow on Instagram, even though 95% of them didn't have a threads account. Instead it put them in a pending list, automatically following them once they sign into the app and activate their profile for the first time.
What makes you think the shadow accounts are part of the 100M figure? The Android app alone is already in the 50M+ downloads band.
The point is that all of those 100 million people did make an active decision and take active steps to create an account. I'm not sure why Meta making the sign-up process very easy is meant to be a criticism.
The criticism is more that 100 million people are willing to sign up for another Meta product.
It's shocking that people still use their apps, given how awful the company is.
Honestly, it's not really all that shocking. People LOVE social media, that's just the way it is. Plus, having a social is practically required in this day and age for any business, big or small to advertise and get the word out. Sure, Facebook/Meta is shady and untrustworthy, but we are far beyond the point of trusting companies anymore. People are willing to be part of the social universe in any way in order to stay informed and relevant. I mean, how many terrible things has Facebook done with user data? Yet, the layman/woman will still use the platform since it's just so popular. I don't use Facebook at all, but if I want to sell something quickly, where am I going? Facebook Marketplace.
Finally, there's Elon. People were happy with twitter and Elon just had to blow it up in order to feed his ego. That turned off advertisers and influencers (the people making the engaging content) and therefore, anybody following that content subsequently moved on to the next thing. It's insane but in making such a mess of things, Elon pretty much convinced people that threads was the better alternative.
Social Media isn't just another part of the internet anymore, it effectively is the internet. Even forum and link-aggregation sites are leaning more into the practices of social media since it is all-encompassing in the modern world. I don't blame those 100 million people for switching to threads, what else was gonna happen?
And the thing is they are reporting the number of shadow accounts they create. If I were a meta investor I would be looking for a class action right about now.
I don't think they are because if they were the number of accounts they report would be 1.4 billion and not 100 million.
You should remember that there's a lot of numbers between 0 and 1.4 billion - say, 100 million.
Why would they not pad their numbers if they cannot meaningfully be held accountable?
If padding with X users is projected to generate the most profit, then they are going to do just that.
I can't say whether or not they're lying about their numbers, just that they're definitely not reporting "shadow accounts" (Instagram accounts who haven't activated a Threads profile but can still be followed) as active users.
They are accountable to their board of directors though, just like when that IRL app was found to be padding their numbers with bots last month and shut down.