Automatically creating a shadow account for everyone on Instagram?
Even allowing people to follow that account?
Sounds like they really wanted to push Threads out the door in a big way.
Fuck Meta and all but this isn’t news. Meta litterally said straight up that they would be doing this before threads ever launched. If you have an instagram account then that is also your threads account. This isn’t some conspiracy it’s exactly what they told everyone they were doing. It’s no diferent than linked accounts for google services.
Yeah this Threads issue is getting into the tin foil delusional territory now. Just as you said. They literally say “well use your Instagram acccount” of you bother to read their disclaimers they literally tell you that they are literally using your Instagram account. It’s “Threads by Instagram”. When you first log in it ll import all your Instagram contacts and you cna “follow” them. And if they don’t have it yet it’ll say “you’ll follow as soon as they join threads” there is no “Shadow Threads account, because they are using the Instagram account.”.
You can definitely be against threads and Meta. I Personally am not super thrilled about it. But there is way more than enough to hate a out meta and threads without making stuff up.
I think the difference is that the Threads user count keeps getting thrown around as an indicator of its success and viability, but it’s not a great KPI.
I do think people are using this “realization” of accounts being automatically created as a conspiratorial gotcha, but it’s still important to remind people of this scenario as they evaluate their prospects.
They’re not creating a shadow account, you’re literally logging in with your instagram account.
What this post is implying, is that the user numbers are just existing instagram accounts, which doesn’t make sense because in that case they’d have 2 billion users within the first second.
You can follow/request to follow before the user has actually “created” the account, so they’re lying about which users have done that already, not about how many users they actually have.
Come at me downvotes
Yeah, I signed up for it, they have an option for you to pre-follow people for when they sign up to threads
It’s not creating a “shadow account”, it is literally the same account. Threads is just a different frontend for what already existed with Instagram. And Meta would’ve been stupid, if they wouldn’t have use what they already have.
Does anyone remember Google+? When they tried to make everyone with a YouTube account also have a Google+ account.
Spoiler alert: it didn’t go well
Which is a pity because the ideas of having “circles” was actually clever. Or at least I thought so back then. I wonder how modern social media would look like if they all implemented that.
Sadly, it was destined to fail. In Diaspora and in Google+.
The thing is, while people definitely do have different circles, they don’t like to think about these circles in an explicit way.
Facebook has had something like this for a while now, you can set visibility settings on every post, but again almost nobody uses it.
Now we know why it was not launched in EU.
Ah. The Google+ approach to signing up “users”.
Yeah all that mess with Google+ and all that came out of it was we lost the + operator in Google Search.
Just deleted my Instagram account. I really want go delete Facebook and remove all things Meta from my life.
I think something that a lot of the comments are missing here is the fact that threads, Instagram and Facebook all have been migrated from individual accounts to ‘meta’ accounts. I’m certain that we will see this happen with many platforms unless there is a serious shift in data protection laws. I don’t personally think it’s great that it’s the case but that’s just how it is. The meta platform is quite similar to how google migrated YouTube users to google accounts way back in the day. This monolithic structure ensures that they can keep your user data in a more streamlined database. From a sys admin and a business perspective it makes a lot of sense. From a user who doesn’t care and already uses all of those services perspective it makes a lot of sense. From a privacy conscious user perspective it makes no sense. Then again metas platform is in no way for the user who cares how their data is being handled.
I guess another perspective is talking about interoperability. It kind of feels like they are taking the web3 (I know it’s a loaded term) approach but instead of applying it in a way that allows free development and communication in a way that basically pulls from decentralized/distributed databases you instead get a centralized monolithic model that creates interoperability within their own walled garden.
Dude there are people with the name poo poo pee pee on Facebook. I regret ever using my real name with Google and Facebook
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WhatsApp is a messenger. Facebook, Instagram and Threads are social media. Also, Threads is actually by Instagram moreso than it is by Meta (although the distinction isn’t too dramatic, it’s just under the Instagram branding)
The fact that WhatsApp is so crucial may very well be the reason. In India and places in Europe, WhatsApp is literally a direct replacement of texting, which means it contains communications from practically everyone and everything - your workplace, your local government, your grocery store, your gym, your friends and family, public services, etc. And since your chats themselves are E2E encrypted, the background usage data Meta can extract from users will be too dirty and unmonetizable.
Their interactions on Facebook and Instagram - now that’s rich data. They get to know exactly where and with which people your preferences and interests lie.
Can we please stop with the misinformation campaign.
Everyone on here is trying to pat each other on the back by being better than Reddit.
So far no one on here acts differently from Reddit, no matter how much you guys like to pretend lol.
“Shadow accounts” lol. It’s literally your instagram account. Threads is built on top of Instagram. None of this is some hidden secret.
I’d you have to create a threads account, which shares and logins to your Instagram account, for it to be active, but people are being sent advice to follow accounts which haven’t been activated, then this is bad faith behaviour and not misinformation.
I fucking KNEW it.
35 million users my asshole - they’re just counting existing Instagram accounts.
Pretty sure they’re not. I mean those are instagram accounts, but only those who enabled threads. It’s also at 93 million now.
Why is it so hard to believe that people download the app and try it out? It’s easy to do, users don’t have to create a new account, the app is number one on the App Store, they’re probably advertising it in instagram, and it’s still just 20% of the instagram userbase.
Decentralization is nice, but most people don’t care about it and it’s too complicated or annoying to sign up there. Threads is dead simple and people want a Twitter replacement. It’s also “just” a fifth of the Twitter userbase.
Most of the people just care for “the hot new thing” some just dislike twitter more, some are forced by friends to use it (me :( )
Is kinda weird seeing so many people on Lemmy just do not trust any data from social media.
The things of the fediverse is that everything is too complicated, seeing my friends signups for Threads they just downloaded 1 app, and max 7 clicks and they made an account, they thought Mastodon was too hard to use :(
Setting things up on fediverse is overly complicated and could be made easier.
The biggest problem is it really isn’t all that clear what the pros and cons are various instances are, and the truth is that for the most part with the exception of a few particular instances it really doesn’t matter.
What might make the most sense is to have a website people can sign up on and then it just registers their account on one of a few instances to spread the load. Obviously that list I would have to be curated so it didn’t include obvious problematic instances,but it wouldn’t be that hard to do that. And that would make it as easy as threads is which basically is just an instance when all said and done.
Something that would make it massively easier is portable/decentralised identities, or at least easy account migration. This should go for communities as well so that a community can exist independently of an instance, or be migrated to another instance with subscribers being redirected seamlessly.
It isn’t very easy to get hold of for the “uninitiated”. Which is partially a good thing, in my opinion. Meaningful interactions require effort.
Barriers to entry improve the quality of participants.
I smell an antitrust lawsuit coming up. Whether we hate Twitter or not, they could have a valid case against Meta here as this shit is anti-competitive as fuck. If Elon is smart enough, and that’s a big if, he could seize the opportunity to sue Meta over this and win. To just be able to recycle existing Instagram users gives Meta an unfair advantage over existing microblogging social media platforms.
Using an advantage does not mean it’s anti competitive.
It is anti-competitive because it is like Windows forcing Internet Explorer as a default, which the EU for instance ruled anti-competitive in the past.
But they aren’t forcing Threads as a default. They are associating Instagram accounts to Threads accounts, the same way Google associates GMail accounts to GDrive.
We all hate Facebook, but can we hate them for the things that they actually do, instead of inventing false reasons to hate them?
Good point, the GMail and GDrive analogy is indeed more accurate. Though I don’t believe Google is a good example as it is actually the subject of many antitrust lawsuits.
Why does everything have to be a conspiracy with some people? Threads literally and directly explains that it uses your Instagram account. They’re the same account. Nothing crazy. No magic. No oogie boogie. Just the same account.
It definitely is oogie boogie, which is what makes it illegal in europe as it’s against gdpr, which is why it’s not available in europe.
They’re doing some dodgy stuff with your data, that’s for sure. But the sign-up is smooth. Instagram has a LOT of users, and Meta is leveraging that and making it super easy to share to IG that you have made said threads account (and if you don’t, they will do it for you). The FOMO is real.
They have taken the biggest challenge to use a new social media platform, rebuilding your spidery web of follows, mutuals, weird interests, and friends, and made it basically transparent. It’s a UX marvel. The sign-up numbers reflect that IMO.
Sharing data of users from one company to another company without their consent is literally what GDPR exists to stop. Instagram is one company. Threads is another company.
If it isn’t oogie boogie then it literally wouldn’t have massive legislation against it preventing it worldwide for eu citizens.
Is threads a separate company though? It’s pretty explicit in saying “Threads an Instagram App”
In European law it doesn’t matter. You try and bypass laws and the courts have none of it. It’s very “fuck around find out”. They already decided against them for antitrust for doing exactly that.
That was the ruling [PDF] from the European Union’s highest court, the Court of Justice, when it upheld a decision by German antitrust regulators that Meta had abused its dominance in social media by milking users for information and swirling it together to serve up ads to users.
If you bypass shit in the EU they slap you with something else and make an example of you.
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If you signed up for Valve in the EU for like Left 4 Dead or Half Life or something, it would be against the law for them to share that account with Steam?
Account linking is usually done through a system that you opt into, agreeing to have that link.
This is entirely different, it’s just “fuck it we’ve got all this data, we’ll share it across and use it regardless of consent or not”.
While for other things it’s a completely external registration, for example I have a Steam account but also have to make a completely separate Capcom account for Street Fighter, then link the two together.
The key component is that the end user consents before any data is shared, whereas Meta’s approach is just to do it regardless of consent, treating your private information as something you don’t have a right to control.
You need to activate the threads account. People are being asked to follow accounts which haven’t been activated IE created.
You’re missing the point.
I don’t think I’m missing any point. Have you used it? They’re owned by the same company. Threads is separate but part of Instagram. Other than the user name being reserved on Threads in case the Instagram user wants to sign up, there isn’t an account created. If you try to search the name of any of those accounts in Threads it doesn’t come up at all. (Edit: mistyped a word)
Argh
This seemed obvious the moment they said 10m accounts on launch. People aren’t that proactive
It seems obvious because they literally said that’s what they’re doing. They’re not trying to hide it.
If you have an Instagram account, it literally takes a single click to sign up for Threads. Your Instagram account is the same as your Threads account.
It’s like how your Gmail account is the same as your Google Drive account.
They did say “X milions of accounts were ACTIVATED in one day”, not “created”.
