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Threads: First Impressions of the Latest ‘Thanks, I Hate It’ Social Media App

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A phone held up against a blue background with the Threads logo on it
The Threads app's motto? "Say More." Don't we already know where that's gotten us?  (Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Threads! It’s mostly terrible, yes? But you’re also on it? And you’ve checked it 17 times since it launched last night?

Yes, Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter-competitor app Threads is here, and already it’s amassed millions of users thanks to its close integration with Instagram. It has also amassed complaints, speculation, and every once in a while, a quality post.

Here, on the first full day of Threads’ availability to the public, some of us from the KQED Arts team offer our first impressions.

Give us a followers-only, chronological feed, jeez

A followers-only, chronological feed is the only thing anybody wants in a social media app, and this is what Threads denies its users. The only reason to join a new social media platform is to revel in its followers-only, chronological feed, because five years down the line, it’s inevitably ruined by shoving a bunch of stuff in your face that nobody wants. Threads has decided to jump straight to this five-years-later point of enshittification: my feed is full of Mr. Beast, Complex, Wendy’s, crypto bros, tech reporters and other garbage I did not sign up to see. I’d love to say that this would mean the death knell for Threads, but Meta is essentially too big to fail; in nearly every other instance of stealing from other social media platforms, they’ve gotten away with it.

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This morning, head of Instagram Adam Mosseri acknowledged the lack of a followers-only feed, along with the absence of search, hashtags, and DMs, and promised “we’re on it.” But for those who want to run screaming and delete their account now, sorry: if you delete your Threads account, you’re also forced to delete your Instagram account with it.

As for the upsides? “At least it isn’t Twitter” isn’t much of a glowing review. But I no longer want to supply free content to Elon Musk on his constantly malfunctioning platform, and I’m not alone. Time will tell if Zuckerberg’s crew can come up with features more compelling for what they are than what they aren’t.—Gabe Meline

The calm? Yeah, that won’t last

12 p.m. July 6: How is Threads? I wouldn’t know, baby! Having worked in social media and social-adjacent journalism roles for over a decade, I’m finally in a job that does not require me to be wildly invested and involved in “the latest in social media” on a 24/7 basis. So like any reasonable person who wrests a degree of control back over their life, I am now — for the next few hours, anyway — gleefully flexing that control by not activating my Threads account (and let’s be real, if you have an Instagram account that’s all this really is — a de facto activation of the Threads account every Instagram user basically already now has.)

This calm won’t last, of course. Judging from the air of “oh, of course” inevitability with which the launch announcement was met among Twitter users, Threads is probably going to become the next Twitter pretty fast. Not just because of that portability of your account and your follower count from Instagram (although do you want to see what your most visual pals are writing in text format?) but because of the fact we’ve all been waiting for New Twitter and, like Goldilocks with a screen time problem, we’ve not found any of the previous options on offer to be Just Right. We’re all tired, and if there’s finally a new option that looks good enough, we’ll probably accept it, with all its wrinkles and evolving features. So, if enough folks make that compromise (and I think they will, fueled by what’s been done to their beloved Twitter since Musk’s takeover), I’ll do it too — basically, so as not to be left in the cold on both the personal and professional fronts. But for now… just let me have a day without Threads?

5 p.m. July 6: I am probably now on Threads.—Carly Severn

Bring back anonymity!

I was shaped/burned by the flames of Tumblr in the mid-to-late 2010s, so the first thing I noticed about Threads is that you need to link it with your Instagram. This makes it slightly more annoying to have alternate, somewhat-anonymous accounts, since Instagram tends to be more personable or influencer-y than, say, the K-pop stan accounts of Twitter and TikTok.

Not to imply that there isn’t a wide fandom scene on Instagram, but I have a hard time seeing those subcultures flourishing in an isolating environment like Threads. (I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.) There’s not a ton of opportunities to personalize one’s profile, like adding a header.

It’s also very ugly.—Nisa Khan

Call it what it is: two billionaires in a tiresome pissing contest

Most of what I’ve seen on Threads so far is (fittingly) very meta and therefore very boring. Threads about Threads. Beyond that, what I dislike most about the Current State of Social Media is knowing who’s calling the shots: a couple of billionaires engaged in a pissing contest over a form of communication and expression that has come to mean very much to very many. These bros are the frickin’ worst.

Mark Zuckerberg, a 39-year-old American man worth $101.5 billion and who employs tens of thousands of people, shitposted on Twitter yesterday for the first time in 11 years.

Meanwhile Twitter — owned by Elon Musk, a person I try to know as little about as possible (and who happens to be worth an unfathomable $249.4 billion) — is now threatening to sue Meta over Threads. (The Twitter lawyer’s letter accuses Meta of hiring former Twitter employees with trade secrets.) It’s like a straight-up schoolyard scene over here, folks.

Concurrently, Twitter itself is being sued by former employees for a host of reasons, including, most recently, allegedly refusing to pay for legal arbitration fees. Any time a reporter asks Twitter for comment, they get a poop emoji in response.

I do not want to know any of this. Better yet, I don’t want the products that help me learn new things, connect with colleagues, look at art and stay in touch to do such fundamentally bad things that we need to constantly cover both their mistakes and willful wrongdoings. I am even mad at my editor for asking me to think about the Current State of Social Media and write something about it. Insert a “throwing up arms in disgust” emoji here.—Sarah Hotchkiss

I hated everything before and I will probably hate this too

I have, in my entire life, only willingly joined two social media platforms. The first was Friendster (yes, I’m old, shut your mouth, etc.) and the second was MySpace. (Miss you, Tom!) I was dragged kicking and screaming from MySpace when it became apparent that no one else was using it anymore. Fifteen years on, I am still cursing the first person in my Top 8 to defect to Facebook and take everyone else with them. (I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN, JOE.)

Twitter was thrust upon me by my editor when I started working for JustinTimberlake.com in 2009. “It’s essential that you’re on this platform,” she said, entirely unaware that because of my refusal to ever interact with the site, no one would see my posts anyway. Still, I dutifully typed out dull sentences of 140 characters or less and links (that still populated as boring-ass URLs instead of actual article previews) for as long as I remained in Mr. Timberlake’s employ.

It’s only in the last six years that I’ve actually found Twitter useful at all. Writing about pop culture for KQED meant checking the “Trending” topics every single morning. Now I question whether the section even works anymore. When it comes to using Twitter, Elon Musk’s toolbaggery is a major turnoff, for sure, but — real talk — if Twitter still worked, I would still use it. I really do miss it being useful.

Inside Threads, for the first 20 minutes, I felt like Janet in The Good Place — just staring into bare white nothingness, waiting for someone to summon me from the abyss. When I did finally find the “thread” portion — the place with actual posts — I was immediately reminded that social media biter Mark Zuckerberg is involved in this by the fact that the layout is basically identical to Twitter. (Is that legal? It feels like that shouldn’t be legal…) The second thing that struck me is that the people I primarily follow on Instagram are artists and friends, not the journalists I follow on Twitter. I have no idea how to find my favorite writers and commentators on Threads and I am 98% sure that I don’t have the patience to figure it out.

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So sure, I’m on Threads now. (Shrug emoji.) But like every other platform that isn’t Friendster or MySpace, I will probably only figure out how to use it about three years after the 38,763,893 other people who downloaded it before me. Probably see you there when I do. Because, really. Where else are we going to go?—Rae Alexandra

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