I would like to take back my statement that it won’t fail. I seemed to be right about getting initial users but their speech policies look absurd compared to twitter. People are getting suspended for swearing too much. Everyone’s gonna leave if it’s too sensitive. + twitter is suing.
Discussion
They’ve recreated pre-Elon Twitter, Twitterfiles Twitter, the platform where accounts got nonsense suspensions and bans because they didn’t actively promote wokeism and dared question the Cathedral.
The real market for that is tiny, but the market for the State to push new Current Things on lemmings with bot farms in safe spaces is something I may have underestimated.
Maybe you were right and it does succeed, but only as some ridiculous Frankenstein of pre-Elon Twitter and pre-API-fee Reddit - maybe it’s the place to develop the new Red Guard?
It’s never succeeding in a free market, but Zuck (like Elon) knows how to play ball with the State so maybe it’s success is funded for him?
Threads will cost Meta a lot of money, because it mainly moves eyeball time from Instagram to a Twitter clone.
Instagram is an e-commerce and advertising juggernaut. Twitter clones are not.
It’s probably Zuckerberg’s own political motivations driving it. Not sure it makes sense through any other framing?
We could both be right.
Zuck in a billionaire pissing contest decided to grab staff that Elon fired and build a competitor given Twitter never really reached the levels it should have (with zaps it would have, the irony!) as he said.
But it’s niche is disaffected Twitter Users - text heavy, opinionated, political/news; not ethots showing their arses in filtered photos which is his built-in userbase.
The only ones who will stick to the censorious Threads™️ will form a woke echo chamber. That cohort isn’t big enough to run a fiat platform.
Zuck will probably open arms accept the State to come in and help control the narrative for money. Of course all the brand advertising that rejects Elon politically will go there too but the userbase will pale in comparison. It will need State support to survive but it might be worth it for the government having left and right split into echo chambers for this content type so they can better calibrate what messaging works on each for control?
elon is killing twitter with his login wall