There was a time when Twitter was the perfect platform to stay informed. It was the place of breaking news, of well-informed analyzes by authoritative people, of institutional accounts which from there updated in real time on developing situations, decisions, positions taken. All this, of course, is still there. But in the last year it seems to have dissipated. Dissolved in the anarchy of blue checks, once a mark of authenticity and somehow quality, now a medal of merit for the algorithm that rewards the eight euros a month paid to obtain it. Made evanescent by attention-grabbing videos, useless advertisements, long motivational posts all the same.
The first round of the match between Musk and Zuckerberg
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg don’t like each other. They have long been teasing each other from a distance. They even promised to give each other a good fight in a mixed martial arts fight in Las Vegas. But the fight has already begun. And it is Zuckerberg who attacks first.
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Meta, the Facebook holding company, aims to hit Twitter right in the heart with the release of Threads. It has churned out a very similar product to the microblogging platform. But without the flaws that in the last year seem to have made the little bird unbearable. As proof there is a new element. Unlike Twitter’s other announced deaths, this time it seems analysts and pundits are all in agreement: Threads is not Mastodon. It is not destined to remain an evanescent, momentary phenomenon. It is a serious threat to the very life of Twitter. But why?
The perfect timing of Thread’s launch: the features
Let’s start with the fact that Threads shares many functional similarities with Twitter. Its App Store profile promises users the ability to “share your point of view” through text- or image-based posts known as “threads,” to which people can react, reply, and share. Many of the app’s features appear to be tightly integrated with Instagram, providing users with the option to log in through Instagram, keep their username, and follow the same accounts.
“Whatever you are interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favorite creators and others who love the same things,” Threads’ App Store listing continues. It also promised users the ability to “build a loyal following” and “share your ideas, opinions and creativity with the world“.
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Threads’ launch comes with such precise timing that by itself it’s worthy of a move in combat. Last Saturday Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in October 2022 for 44 billion, limited the app’s functionality for many users. He limited the number of tweets users could read per day. He introduced a “temporary contingency measure” that prevented logged-in users from viewing tweets in their web browser.
Reason? Limit the theft of posts by artificial intelligences. Then he announced another change: access to his TweetDeck platform would be limited to paying users only. A series of moves that has triggered numerous protests on social media: farewell threats, tweets shared with the hashtag #TwitterDeath (Twitter is dead), new requests for possible alternatives. Because Twitter is actually not a social network like the others. It is a social network of texts, of opinions and popularity aroused, of consortia and common battles. Outside of Twitter, this is missing in the variegated global social scene.
Musk’s false move. Meta ready to take advantage of it
Zuckerberg waited for a false move to attack. Musk did it, and he took the opportunity to focus on the imbalance created. Monday is ahead of its time and the sudden launch of Thread leaks out in the American press.
Of course, he has his problems to face: a plan to cut 21,000 people; clashes with the European Union over the transfer of data to the United States (Thread will not arrive immediately in Europe, precisely for this reason); the need to face the TikTok threat, the favorite social network of the younger generations. But it also has firm feet on which to put strength to launch the attack: a still impressive cash flow; a solid and consolidated business model unlike the ‘trial and error’ that seems to characterize Twitter in this period; but above all 3 billion users worldwide, against Twitter’s 300 million.
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What will happen if companies, big media, big opinion leaders, institutions, experts and intellectuals start adopting Thread en masse? Arguably that Thread would become the place Twitter stopped being. This is Zuckerberg’s challenge. That he knows he can be accredited among the great maneuverers who, between companies and institutions, have never digested Twitter in Musk’s hands.
Musk’s good intentions, faded into a social media that seems to have lost its soul
Who knows if this is one of the fears of Tesla’s number one. Who bought Twitter with the best of intentions: to make it the platform of freedom of opinion at a time when social networks put too many brakes to satisfy the requests of world institutions to contain hate speech and fake news. Important goal. Noble in its own way, if not acceptable at times. But that in practical execution seems to have failed, leading Twitter to become a place where it is simply difficult to understand why a user should be there.
Musk and Zuckerberg will fight. Happy them and their followers. But Meta and Twitter have already started. The rivalry is always between two of the most influential entrepreneurs in the world. Capable of imagining, and in some ways creating the conditions for everyone’s future. Whether it’s the Metaverse, the conquest of space, augmented reality or the power of artificial intelligence algorithms placed at the service of human rationality, a political match is also at stake between the two, which affects everyone. Musk is currently flexing his muscles and making loud proclamations, amplified by the horde of acolytes who echo him on his social network in all the countries in which the platform operates (there are everywhere, even in Italy).
Zuckerberg, more silent, prepares the attack. In this case he announced it with just three words on his Thread profile: “Lets ‘do this”. Let’s do it. Phrase that sounds like the beginning of a battle.