"Who cares, in other words, whether or not Threads succeeds, when the existence of a new Twitter will do little to serve most peoples’ hunger for authentic communication?"

"Fortunately, the original small community ethos of the early Internet seems to be mounting a comeback in forms like podcasting, e-mail newsletters, Discord groups, and TalkNats.com-style discussion sites—all of which can offer a more homegrown and personal variety of online interaction. These efforts deserve our attention more than the spectacle of billion-dollar companies falling over themselves to force together as many people as possible. To make the online experience less hostile, we don’t need ever-more complicated algorithms deployed by ever-larger platforms. It’s enough to instead return to a conception of digital interaction that occurs on a much more human scale."

Writes Cal Newport in "We Don’t Need a New Twitter/It’s time to move beyond the flawed idea of a global conversation platform" (The New Yorker).

I don't know why he didn't put blogs in that set of things that have "the original small community ethos of the early Internet."

You want "human scale"? I'll give you human scale!

By the way, I strongly suspect that the real reason for saying "Who cares... whether or not Threads succeeds...?" is that it's apparent that Threads is not succeeding. 

Hey, I wonder how Threads is doing?

Everyone was talking about it, and then, it seemed, nobody was talking about it.

Ah, I see USA Today is keeping up: "A flash in the pan? Just [2] weeks after launch, Instagram Threads app is already faltering."

Daily traffic was 49 million in Week 1 and 23.6 million at the beginning of Week 2. And the time spent on the app has fallen by an even greater percentage, from 21 minutes July 7th to 6 minutes on July 14th.

The author of that article, Jennifer Jolly, offers Threads some advice: "For Threads to wipe out Twitter, it must tackle news with the best content moderation the world’s ever seen, ban polarizing public figures who peddle dangerous misinformation, and make everyone who uses the app agree to some basic rules of engagement."

"During a live audio event on the social media platform, Musk’s team of all-male math, AI and engineering experts spoke about how they wanted to create an AI..."

"... that was smarter than humans with the goal of benefiting society. Musk said the fundamental goal of the company is to understand 'what the hell is really going on.' The event showcased how Musk seems to initially be more focused on answering deep scientific questions, rather than competing head to head with OpenAI, Google and Microsoft to create consumer AI products. Musk did say he saw his venture as an alternative to bigger AI companies but said xAI was still 'embryonic,' and that it would take time for it to catch up with OpenAI and Google...."

I'm reading "Musk’s new AI company, xAI, will aim to solve scientific mysteries The billionaire and his team of artificial intelligence researchers gave details of the company’s goals during a live Twitter event Friday" (WaPo).

If it's true that xAI is really about answering deep scientific questions — AKA understanding what the hell is going on — then this is a nice contrast to Mark Zuckerberg's Threads, which was created (it seems) to compete head to head with Twitter.

I went into the comments over there, mainly to see if they were saying what I expected them to say — essentially: We hate Musk. And, yes, there it is, right on top of the "most liked" pile of comments: "Just what we need, AI that is explicitly fascist and white supremacist."

IN THE COMMENTS: Leland writes:  

WaPo commenters are why ChatGPT does so well. Their comments seem like coherent sentences, but the words used don't create a coherent thought. What is explicitly fascist? Was Musk proposing having his AI collude with the government to control the population? That's fascism, and while it exists quite a bit these days; I don't think that is what Musk is proposing. Musk is proposing quite the opposite.

Instapundit quotes that comment in full and adds: "Nowadays anti-fascism is called 'fascism,' just as explicit racism is called 'anti-racism.'"

"[Threads] chooses what posts you see, from whom and in what order. Frankly, it’s not the best. While this approach is exactly what has made TikTok such a success..."

"... Threads can choose an unfortunate, uncreative mix of posts. In one scroll you might see Christian prayer accounts, raunchy memes and endless thirsty brands desperate to be seen. The biggest thing you can do is follow more people. Drown out the ick with experienced creators, outlets and people you already know are going to be interesting. There’s no way to import your Twitter follows yet, but you can search manually, look through other people’s follows and see who they’ve found.... Next you want to go on a block and mute spree.... If all of this sounds like too much work, consider just waiting until the app has more features to help and a feed of who you follow. Not everyone needs to be a beta tester...."

From "How to make Threads work more like a good version of Twitter/Tips and tricks to help you navigate the latest social network, Threads" by Hearther Kelly (WaPo).

Christian prayer accounts, raunchy memes and endless thirsty brands.... oh, no! No no no no... and you're expected to "drown out the ick" and "go on a block and mute spree." 

What if the thing you thought you hated really was what you loved most of all?

I'm reading "Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads? The app is vapid, boring and destined to fail/The blandness of the Threads experience makes me yearn for the trolls of Twitter" by media studies professor Siva Vaidhyanathan (The Guardian).

While millions might be using Twitter at any one time, one’s Tweets would only flow in the feeds of a few dozen, maybe hundreds. Occasion Tweets [sic] would rocket around within language groups if many people liked or re-Tweeted them. But that was unpredictable and unsystematic. That’s no way to run an information machine. That’s because Twitter never was an information machine. It was and is an emotion machine. Its fundamental emotion is indignation. We all overdid it with indignation in the best days of Twitter. Even nice people over-indulged, which is why it was ultimately corrosive to public deliberation and civic virtue....

On Threads, there are no hashtags.

"I like the logo, definitely a piece thread that happens to be shaped like the Tamil கு (ku)."

 A comment on the NYT article "What Is the Threads Logo Supposed to Look Like? Sure, it’s probably an @ symbol. But the abstract logo of Instagram’s new Twitter rival has drawn comparisons to an ear, an ampersand and a piece of spaghetti."

Threads is getting a lot of puffy press. 

Is anyone saying that "Threads" sounds an awful lot like "threats"?

ADDED: Here's this in today's NYT: "Why the Early Success of Threads May Crash Into Reality/Mark Zuckerberg has used Meta’s might to push Threads to a fast start — but that may only work up to a point." That doesn't sound puffy. Mike Isaac likens Threads to Google+, which back in 2011, was supposed to be the "Facebook killer." It got a big headstart because there were pre-existing Google users. But by 2018, it was dead. You need people to keep using the thing.

"The atmosphere of Twitter has lately gone from one of a decaying dinner party... to that of a bar where the bartender has to eject the last swaying patrons."

"Threads, by contrast, was bright and new, like high school on the first day of class. Meta seemed to have encouraged celebrities and influencers to pre-stock the feed with aggressively enthusiastic posts. Users entered into the midst of a raucous party.... It is currently impossible to see posts solely from followed accounts.... As a result, much of what I see on Threads is the kind of banal celebrity and brand self-promotion that I tried to avoid on Twitter—posts from Chris Hemsworth and Ellen DeGeneres, Spotify asking fans for their favorite playlists, and suggestions to follow Kardashians.... What once made Twitter successful was its steadfast commitment to real-time information. It was a free-for-all shout fest of journalists, newsmakers, and creators, and anyone else could join the din on a relatively equal footing. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, posted on Threads that the app would not 'encourage' news, as Twitter once did.... Threads, he went on, is 'a less angry place for conversations.'... So far, no one seems to know quite what to post on Threads, though the dominant tone is anodyne and sincere...."

Writes Kyle Chayka in "Meta’s Threads Is More of the Same Social Networking/Much of what’s on the new social network is the kind of banal celebrity and brand self-promotion that users have tried to avoid on Twitter" (The New Yorker).