What are Threads and Bluesky really for? | TechScape

The Twitter alternatives need to figure out what they want to be

Threads and Bluesky need to figure out what they want to be The Twitter alternatives are gaining ground, and it wouldn't take much to steal X's crown as a news-sharing service • Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article here Bluesky, from former Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Photograph: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto/Shutterstock Josh Taylor @joshgnosis Every time Elon Musk does something bad, you can see an influx of new users to Bluesky – one of the many social media sites to pop up as a potential Twitter/X alternative. The platform, still invite-only, has more than 1.5 million users but it is slowly growing. A website called Twexit, which tracks the exodus of users from Twitter to Bluesky, has noted spikes of people activating their invite codes in the past couple of months. In the year since Musk took over Twitter, there have been peaks of new users registering that coincide with when Twitter became X, when Musk announced the block feature would be removed and when he floated the idea of charging users a subscription fee. Interestingly, there was no bounce when X removed the headlines from news articles shared on the site, and so far there hasn't been an influx of users horrified at the misinformation and violent content on X from the Israel-Hamas war. There has, however, been a steady increase in people posting daily on Bluesky since 19 September, but it hovers at around 10% of those who have registered accounts (around 150,000) . Similarly, in the past week Platformer's Casey Newton and others have noticed that Threads, Meta's own answer to Twitter, appears to be picking up again, after a massive decline on initial excitement after the launch. "One of the ways Threads has felt more lively in the past week is that its users are complaining about it more," Newton wrote on the Verge. It's mostly just a vibe based on the new followers people are getting, but Similarweb, which tracked Threads's sharp decline after launch, has recorded a slight bounce in the past two weeks based on Android app data. A recent thread from CNN asking for journalists to make themselves known on the platform received more than 2,000 replies and more than 6,000 likes. It's still modest compared to some popular accounts on Twitter, but shows there is appetite for Threads to become the professionalised place for news, at least. It's not clear, though, what the organisations running Threads or Bluesky actually want their platforms to be As Newton points out, it wouldn't be hard for Threads to introduce lists and hashtags and trending topics, along with a TweetDeck-like interface to give the media what they want. Except it's been somewhat explicit (and not surprising from Meta) that they're not designing it to be a place for news, and Meta has never reliably given the media what they want. Considering the fight Meta had in Australia over the news media bargaining code to pay for content, and a battle in Canada over similar legislation, it's hard to see them luring news on to Threads. All the news that's 'too risky' to print The head of Threads says the app won't pivot to focusing on news. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP Last week, the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, who is also running Threads, said that Meta is "not anti-news", but it won't be promoted. "News is clearly already on Threads. People can share news; people can follow accounts that share news. We're not going to get in the way of any either. But, we're also not going to amplify news on the platform," he said. "To do so would be too risky given the maturity of the platform, the downsides of over-promising, and the stakes." Twitter was never a big driver of traffic to journalism sites. (NPR last week revealed it had only cost the company 1% of its traffic in the six months since it left the platform.) But it was useful for breaking news – tracking people on the ground in emerging crises or news events, and keeping track of reporting as it happened. What's keeping X alive for now is that its rivals are still bare-bones versions of Twitter. Bluesky is exclusive and doesn't have video, Threads doesn't have hashtags, and neither platform has direct messaging functions. (But Threads introduced voice posts and an edit function in the last week, so things are moving quickly.) I can see a time when Threads becomes the default professional website for news where the politicians and journalists all are, while Bluesky becomes the site for communities, dank shitposting, and all things NSFW. But it's not quite there yet. For those who are after breaking news quickly, many of the government accounts and politicians are still mostly on X and not on Threads or Bluesky. Until there is a more substantial shift elsewhere, those of us in the news business will still have to wade through the unreliability and increasing toxicity of X. The wider Techscape Social media is filled with disinformation about the Israel-Hamas war. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images The Guardian's Manisha Ganguly and Hibaq Farah investigated the sheer scale of Israel-Hamas war disinformation being spread online. Everything about the Sam Bankman-Fried trial is captivating, but the testimony of Caroline Ellison, the FTX head's ex-girlfriend and former CEO of Alameda Research, last week was jaw-dropping. California's Delete Act, allowing people to get data brokers to delete information they hold on you, will likely be keenly observed in other jurisdictions around the world. ChatGPT is one year old. Just how much has this AI changed things? Meanwhile, a report has found that AI chatbots could help plan a bioweapon attack. Digital wallets are huge in Australia – accounting for around 35% of card transactions. The Australian government is now looking to regulate Apple Wallet and others such as traditional card providers. Will other countries follow suit? "As the world's wealthiest men chest-thump in low-Earth orbit, others wonder how their mess will eventually be cleaned up" – inside the billionaire space race. The saga of Microsoft's $69bn Activision-Blizzard takeover is complete. Advertisement Manage your emails | Unsubscribe | Trouble viewing? You are receiving this email because you are a subscriber to TechScape. Guardian News & Media Limited - a member of Guardian Media Group PLC. Registered Office: Kings Place, 90 York Way, London, N1 9GU. Registered in England No. 908396