Since Elon Musk bought Twitter, we’ve seen several platforms attempt to overthrow it. However, Mastodon was too complicated for casual users, Bluesky remains invite-only, and most people don’t want to pay for multiple newsletters on Substack. Threads, on the other hand, saw millions of registrations in the first days of its launch.
There are a couple of significant differences between Threads and Twitter, though. First of all, at the time of writing, Threads exists only as a mobile app and is completely inaccessible via a web browser. Additionally, it’s not available in the EU just yet, doesn’t include direct-messaging functionality, and won’t let you see a curated feed of just the people you follow.
There are a few upsides if you can look past Meta’s terrible privacy record. Each part of a thread can be up to 500 characters long, you can post up to 10 images per post, and as far as we’re aware, replies from verified users aren’t boosted to the top of posts. Additionally, while Meta has had a real problem with hate speech, unlike Musk, Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t been openly taking sides in culture war debates on his platform.