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- [Narrator] This is Future Tech,

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where each week we
discuss the good, the bad,

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and the ugly of where tech
is headed in 2023 and beyond.

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- Welcome to Future
Tech, I'm Thomas Germain,

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senior reporter at Gizmodo,

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and today I'm talking
to reporter Kyle Barr.

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Yesterday Meta launched

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a competitor to Twitter called Threads,

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and within just a couple of hours,

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tens of millions of people
had already signed up,

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and you were one of them.

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And as I understand it, you are
already loving the platform.

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- Uh, no, no I'm not a big fan.

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Well, there's a couple reasons.

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One, I'm already a
negative person by nature.

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- That's true.

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- Yeah, you know, and then
when I start using it,

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the first few features that
I really wanted to be there,

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a follower's tab, bookmarks,

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just a search function that works

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for searching different topics,
none of that exists yet.

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What we have right now
is just the home tab,

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an algorithmic feed, and
that's about it, right?

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- But it's early days of the app, right?

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It hasn't even been open for 24 hours yet.

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They've said a lot of
those features are coming.

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We'll see what actually happens.

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But people are upset,
especially there's an issue

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about deleting your account, right?

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- That's correct, so
the problem right now is

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if you have a Instagram account,
you have a Threads account,

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you just need to sign up.

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Though if you wanted to
delete your Threads account,

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you'd also have to delete
your Instagram account.

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You can still disable it,

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and so it effectively does the same thing.

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But I know there's people out there

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that would want to delete
it that simply can't

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without deleting their entire Instagram.

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- But these finicky problems aside,

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and some of them were serious, right?

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Threads does have some major advantages.

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And chief among them, I think,

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is that it's built on Instagram's network.

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So when you sign up for Threads,

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you use your Instagram
username, and with a single tap,

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you can bring all of your
followers from Instagram

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when they sign up,

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which helps with one
of the biggest problems

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with starting a new social media company,

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which is that it's really hard
to build those communities.

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Because Instagram already
has 2 billion users,

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they can circumvent that problem.

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That gives them a huge
advantage over Twitter

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and over some of the
other Twitter alternatives

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that we've seen.

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Mastodon, Blue Sky,
there's a bunch of 'em.

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How do you think that Mark
Zuckerberg entering the ring here

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is gonna affect the other
world of Twitter copycats?

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- All these other Twitter
copycats were restricted,

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and who could use 'em?

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And that was by design,

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they were trying to drum up attention.

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They were trying to make
themselves look important.

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And then Meta enters the ring,

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and just says, "Everybody come on!"

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And tens of million people
later, Blue Sky and Spill

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and all these other places
are looking a little bit thin.

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They also have the advantage

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that they've been working
on this publicly for longer.

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For Twitter though, it just
looks like a minefield.

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- Right, I think one of
the things that Threads has

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going forward so far is that
it's, you know, milquetoast.

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It's boring, there's no controversy.

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The CEO isn't tweeting
out casual racism, right?

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And I think even though
it's not really exciting,

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I haven't seen anything
happening on Threads yet

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that's gonna, you know,
get a lot of attention.

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Maybe that's a good thing in a way

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because what people want is
an alternative to Twitter

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where it's safe, it's stable,
the site isn't gonna go down

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because of some crazy technical glitch.

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Users seem to be glomming onto that

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and almost are rooting for
Mark Zuckerberg in a weird way.

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- [Zack] Well, Mark
Zuckerberg's never really had

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that great of a time with his image,

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and so we'll see if he also
becomes the main face of Threads

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like he has tried to be with
the rest of his properties.

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- Yeah, it's funny.

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I think one thing, no
matter how this shakes out,

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what you can say is Elon
Musk has done what, you know,

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tens of millions of dollars
and Meta's PR strategy

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hasn't been able to do,

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which is to make Mark Zuckerberg

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into like an almost likable figure

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that a lot of people wanna
see succeed in this weird way.

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Because for a decade,

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he was one of the most
unpopular men in America.

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Now all of a sudden he's
one of the good guys,

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at least the way people
are talking about it,

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which is pretty strange given
Meta's track record here.

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- And it doesn't help that
Musk is already apparently

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starting a lawsuit against Meta,

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claiming that they've
stole some of their ideas

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and their property, though, I mean,

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does it really take
that much to figure out

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to put posts in a line

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and then ask people to look at them?

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- Yeah, I mean, would they pay us to post,

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not to make the system
that writes the post?

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So I don't know, hard to say,

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but does it sort of seems
like maybe that's a way,

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like we're not gonna be
able to compete with you

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on the actual battlefield
of the marketplace,

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so we're gonna fight you in court instead.

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- Well, that does seem
to be Musk's MO, right?

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He doesn't like it when
other people sue him,

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but as soon as something
happens to him personally,

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the lawyers come out.

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- And Zuckerberg's got the resources

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to make this work, right?

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He's one of the most competitive
men in Silicon Valley.

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He's like the Michael Jordan of tech

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when it comes to really
desperately wanting to win.

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And he's been trying to take on Twitter

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for the better part of a decade.

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He tried to buy it years and
years ago, didn't work out.

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Now it seems he's gonna
try and crush it instead.

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Well, good luck to him,

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because he's already got the advantage.

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He's got Instagram by his side

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and he's got the will of the people.

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I mean, if Twitter
really wants to win out,

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they're gonna have to figure out a way

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to bring people back onto the platform.

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Maybe if Musk actively steps back

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instead of remaining the
figurehead like he is,

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you could engender support,
but in the meantime,

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they're just not doing
themselves any favors.

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- It'd be hard at this point, right?

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- Well, Musk is the
platform at this point.

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If you already have most of
your Twitter followers on there

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really excited for every single Musk post,

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no matter how insane they
are, how they kind of drum up

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a little bit of racism, a
little bit of conspiracies,

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well, then you can't really
stop that now, can you?

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- Well, it's only been 24
hours of Threads so far

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so we'll see how it's gonna go.

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And you know, we're gonna be following it.

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So if you wanna read more

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you can check out our work on
this subject on Gizmodo.com.

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(gentle music)