ANALYSIS | Threads, from Meta, shakes up social networks in less than 48 hours

Washington () — In less than 48 hours, Threads, Meta’s bid to compete with Twitter, exceeded 70 million recordsrocked the social media landscape and sent Twitter into such a state of nerves that it threatens to take legal action against Meta.

But while it is true that users are signing up for Threads in droves and wanting to escape the chaos of Elon Musk’s Twitter, it is equally true that the sudden success of the Meta application could raise a new set of concerns.

Meta was long criticized for its market dominance and for allegedly trying to stifle competition by copying and killing rival apps. Now, several competition experts and even some Threads users fear that if the new app continues to gain traction, Meta and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, will amass even more power and dominance.

“The prospect is of a total monopoly by Meta,” wrote a user. “It’s a real problem for society when a few dozen people and companies own everything, so there can’t be any alternative paradigms,” replied another.

Twitter had always been much smaller than the Meta platforms, but it had an outsized influence on technology, media, and politics. However, as Twitter faltered under Musk, a cottage industry of smaller apps sprang up trying to capture some of its magic. Now, Meta seems the best positioned to win the crown, more than any of them.

The successful launch of Threads this week highlights the uncomfortable reality of the modern digital economy: to beat some of the big names in the industry, you might have to be a giant.

The power of Instagram

Threads’ overnight success is a testament to both discontent with Musk’s ownership of Twitter and the unique power and reach of one of Meta’s biggest properties: Instagram.

Instagram has more than 2 billion users, far more than the 238 million Twitter reported in the months before Musk took control. When new users sign up for Threads, they do so using an Instagram account, and the app asks them to follow all their Instagram contacts with a single tap. It is optional, but it is easy to accept, and it takes a conscious decision to reject it.

By promoting Threads through Instagram, and by sharing Instagram user data with Threads to allow people to instantly recreate their social networks, Meta has made the process of onboarding the platform much easier. This seamless experience has allowed Threads to overcome what is known in the industry as the “cold start” problem, where a new platform has a hard time attracting new users because there are no other users to attract them.

Thanks to the Instagram integration, “the biggest problem, the chicken or the egg, is solved from the beginning,” said Reddit co-founder and venture capitalist Alexis Ohanian. in a video this Thursday (posted, naturally, on Threads).

The fact that Threads has easily overcome that hurdle, according to Ohanian, makes him “optimistic” about the new app.

concern about monopolies

However, that same innovation that got so many users signed up so quickly can raise competition concerns, especially in Europe, where new antitrust rules for digital platforms will take effect in a matter of months.

“From a competitive point of view, this can be problematic because Meta can use it to leverage its market power and raise the barriers to entry, since other rivals would not have the customer base that Meta has through Instagram,” says Agustín Reyna, director of legal and economic affairs at the Brussels-based consumer advocacy organization BEUC.

Under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), “digital gatekeepers,” a term that is expected to encompass Meta and/or its affiliates, will be prohibited from combining a user’s data from multiple platforms without their consent, Reyna explained. Another restriction prohibits requiring users to register on one platform as a condition of using another.

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri appeared to acknowledge these issues this week in a interview with The Verge. According to Mosseri, Threads will not be released in the European Union at the moment due to the “complexity of complying with some of the laws that will come into effect next year,” a claim The Verge suggests refers to the WFD.

The DMA was passed specifically to address antitrust issues raised by large technology platforms. The fact that Threads apparently cannot (yet) meet rules designed to protect competition underscores the uncertainty about the potential competitive impact of the app.

Meta’s take on Threads could also reignite longstanding criticism of the company’s alleged practice of copying and killing rivals, especially as Twitter has warned Meta that it could sue it for theft of trade secrets (a charge Meta denies). .

The problem is not limited to the realm of social networks. As the world advances in the development of artificial intelligence, Threads represents a huge new opportunity for Meta to gather training data for its own AI technology, in a way that could help it catch up with industry leaders like OpenAI and Google. This could complicate any attempt at a comprehensive analysis of what Threads means for technology competition.

An uncertain impact on advertisers and users

Part of what complicates the debate so much is the threat that Threads seems to pose to Twitter.

If Threads pushes Twitter to improve its service, it’s a form of app competition, says Geoffrey Manne, founder of the Portland, Oregon-based International Center for Law and Economics.

But, he added, if it leads to a concentration of power in the social media sector in general, it could mean reduced competition in the sector. It all depends on how you define the market.

“I am inclined to say that it does both simultaneously, and that the ultimate consequences are not so clear cut,” Manne said.

Rather than view it through the lens of a social media marketplace, a useful way to look at the issue is from the perspective of the advertising marketplace, he said. It’s possible that once Threads introduces advertising, which Zuckerberg has said won’t happen until the app has reached significant scale, it will simply bolster Meta’s advertising market power, Manne said. That could lead to increased antitrust scrutiny for Meta, even if the question of competition on social media is ambiguous.

Jeff Blattner, a former Justice Department antitrust official, said having Threads as a rival to Twitter can only benefit consumers.

“Two platforms run by billionaire maniacs are better than one”, wrote in Threads, though if Threads is so successful that it wipes out Twitter entirely, in a way the original question of Meta’s dominance will remain.

an olive branch

Threads has one thing going for it that can nip any competitor concerns in the bud: its commitment to integrating with the same open protocols used by other social media alternatives, like Mastodon.

That would give users the option to migrate their accounts, along with all their follower data intact, to a rival like Mastodon, which is not controlled by Meta.

Although that interop isn’t yet available, Mosseri has repeatedly marked it high on his to-do list.

When it occurs, it could be an important step. What may now look like audience grabbing by Meta could one day end up being millions of people onboarding a massive, decentralized social networking infrastructure that is not controlled by any one company, individual, or organization.

“That’s why we think interoperability requirements are so important,” says Charlotte Slaiman, a competition expert at Washington-based consumer group Public Knowledge. If users could move all their social content from one rival to another whenever they wanted, she said, “we could have fairer competition based on product quality, not just first-mover advantage.”