2023-12-24 04:40:00
” Welcome on your feed! It’s empty at the moment, but won’t stay that way for long. » It is 7 a.m. Thursday in France when Internet users discover a global outage on X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk’s platform. For an hour, it was impossible to read, publish, react. For an hour, it’s impossible to know – via X – what’s happening in the world; the slogan « People on X are the first to know” seems anachronistic. A week following the announcement of an investigation launched by the EU once morest the platform for disseminating false information and violent content, the planets seem to be aligning for its competitor Threads in this Internet war. However, Threads is not perfect, but does Zuckerberg’s new platform even have the weapons to kill X? Although Threads is only a few months old – the network was launched in July in the United States – the announced duel is already taking place.
SHARED CONTENT
Threads wants to be a “benevolent social network” in the words of Mark Zuckerberg, a sort of variation of Instagram but more focused on conversation between Internet users. You must also have an Instagram account to be able to post on Threads and the site allows you to find all your subscribers and subscriptions. “It’s quite confusing. explains Tristan Mendès France, associate lecturer at the University of Paris-Diderot, specializing in digital cultures, we expect to find content from Twitter, but we come across his Instagram subscriptions. » At first glance, Threads actually looks a lot like “Threads is starting a lot late, today everything is still happening on X, it’s always the bonus for the biggest”, explains Tristan Mendès France. Striking example last Tuesday during the vote on the immigration law. Parliament ignites X, thousands of contents are shared and Threads picks up the crumbs.
NUMBER OF SUBSCRIBERS
In absolute value, it is not comparable, Threads acts as a dwarf compared to X, but the trends are interesting. Launched on December 14 in Europe, the Meta application claimed 2.6 million downloads in the first three days, including 400,000 in France. A good start, experts agree. Conversely, X has lost nearly 10% of its subscribers in one year since the arrival of Elon Musk. According to Xavier Degraux, social media consultant, the leak should dry up: “All those disgusted with X have already left. Even Musk’s political agenda, which veers to the far right, no longer has an effect on the number of users, it remains stable. » Five days following its launch in July in around a hundred countries, Threads claimed 100 million subscribers, a few weeks later, only 10 million people visited the application each day, far from the 225 million at X.
DISINFORMATION AND CYBERHARASSMENT
Both phenomena have exploded since the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk. Return of suspended conspiracy accounts, highlighted by the algorithm of unverified content, presence of millions of robots on the platform, “X aggregates everything that is most toxic on the networks, it is notably the number 1 pole of attraction of the fascistosphere” indicates Tristan Mendès France. For the moment, Threads seems to escape it. “Dividing subjects are less highlighted, the comments are therefore less violent. For the moment, it’s more regarding humor, culture, sport”notes Emmanuelle Patry, founder of Social Medial Lab. “Today there is a feeling of oneself which is reassuring, but it is only an illusion. The wave of toxicity has not yet reached the shores of Threads, but there is no reason why Threads will not eventually fall victim to the same failings as X.continues Tristan Mendès France.
MODERATION
Of the many people Musk fired when he bought Twitter, it was probably the moderators who caused the most talk. Today, sexual, anti-Semitic and racist content abounds on X without being worried, with Musk taking refuge behind the sacrosanct freedom of expression. On Threads, none of that for the moment, the moderation is reminiscent of Instagram with the addition of a radical method: the censorship of certain sensitive subjects. If you type “Covid” or “vaccine” in the search bar, you will be taken to the government or WHO site, but you will not be able to access conversations mentioning it on Threads.
PROTECTION OF PERSONAL DATA
This is the subject that frightens astute observers of Meta the most. Parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and now Threads, Meta knows a lot regarding its users and their behavior on the Internet. A concentration that worries Xavier Degraux: “Meta is today Gafam’s biggest data vacuum in terms of quantity and quality. With Threads, they will be able to very finely analyze the digital footprint of each user. » Precise and rare data, therefore expensive. It is too early to know who Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg will win this digital war, or even whether Threads or X will not be able to coexist. “But what we can be sure of, summarizes Xavier Degraux, is that the only one who can kill X is Threads. »
Two giants and some dwarves
“Even if the grass is not always greener elsewhere, the sky is sometimes… bluer! » It is through this message – published on the historic founder of Twitter. We therefore find all the possibilities of Twitter there, except that of posting videos. Moderation is more participatory. There are more reports and hateful content is rare. What is new are the different thematic news feeds that the Internet user can create, thus feeding several algorithms but without mixing everything up. The problem is that, at the moment, Bluesky is only accessible by invitation and the number of subscribers is low compared to the others: 1.5 million worldwide. Mastodon, another alternative to X, claims 14 million registered users around the world, but only 1.8 million accounts are active. What makes Mastodon unique is the absence of an algorithm: only posts from accounts you follow appear on your news feed, in chronological order. But while it launched in 2016, Mastodon never really caught on, even following Musk bought Twitter. A project might nevertheless relaunch these small social networks, the “fediverse”. This is not a play on words regarding a murder story, but a contraction of “federation” and “universe”. The idea, launched by Mark Zuckerberg, is to connect social networks, to allow subscribers and content to be found from one platform to another. Mastodon has already given its approval, but it is very unlikely that Elon Musk will ever be part of the project.
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