Meta's 'Friendly' Threads Collides with Unfriendly Internet

TEMPO.CO, New York - Mark Zuckerberg has pitched Meta's Twitter copycat app, Threads, as a "friendly" refuge for public discourse online, framing it in sharp distinction to the more adversarial Twitter which is owned by billionaire Elon Musk.

"We are definitely focusing on kindness and making this a friendly place," Meta CEO Zuckerberg said on Wednesday, shortly after the service's launch.

Maintaining that idealistic vision for Threads - which attracted more than 70 million users in its first two days - is another story.

To be sure, Meta Platforms (META.O) is no newbie at managing the rage-baiting, smut-posting internet hordes. The company said it would hold users of the new Threads app to the same rules it maintains on its photo and video-sharing social media service, Instagram.

The Facebook and Instagram owner also has been actively embracing an algorithmic approach to serving up content, which gives it greater control over the type of fare that does well as it tries to steer more toward entertainment and away from the news.

However, by hooking up Threads with other social media services like Mastodon, and giving the appeal of microblogging to news junkies, politicians, and other fans of rhetorical combat, Meta is also courting fresh challenges with Threads and seeking to chart a new path through them.

For starters, the company will not extend its existing fact-checking program to Threads, spokesperson Christine Pai said in an emailed statement on Thursday. This eliminates a distinguishing feature of how Meta has managed misinformation on its other apps.

Pai added that posts on Facebook or Instagram rated as false by fact-checking partners - which include a unit at Reuters - will carry their labels over if posted on Threads too.

Asked by Reuters to explain why it was taking a different approach to misinformation on Threads, Meta declined to answer.

In a New York Times podcast on Thursday, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, acknowledged that Threads was more "supportive of public discourse" than Meta's other services and therefore more inclined to draw a news-focused crowd, but said the company aimed to focus on lighter subjects like sports, music, fashion and design.

Nevertheless, Meta's ability to distance itself from the controversy was challenged immediately.

Within hours of launch, Threads accounts seen by Reuters were posting about the Illuminati and "billionaire satanists," while other users compared each other to Nazis and battled over everything from gender identity to violence in the West Bank.

Conservative personalities, including the son of former U.S. President Donald Trump, complained of censorship after labels appeared warning would-be followers that they had posted false information. Another Meta spokesperson said those labels were an error.

REUTERS

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