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How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

engineering.fb.com

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Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#61

Post by lapcat »

Nextgrid wrote: post #59
lapcat wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In trying to sign up for Threads, I was insta-banned when I created an Instagram account, without even having a chance to use it, for allegedly violating the ToS, which seems impossible, since I hadn't done anything yet. They wanted to extract my phone number from me, and then also a photo/video after that to "verify" my identity, so I aborted the process, because I'm not going to feed the data slurping machine. I th…

[flagged]

> I say this in a derogatory fashion

You're not supposed to do that here.

> The reason you're insta-banned is that you didn't "engage" with it properly

I was literally in the process of signing up. How else was I supposed to "engage"?

> Facebook does not want technically-savvy people

How would they even know? Like I said, I hadn't even finished signing up yet.

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#62

Post by _fat_santa »

realprimoh wrote: post #10
puttycat wrote: post #5

The amount of (very impressive) human labor that went into building something that was dead on delivery. Kudos to them for being able to incentivize engineers to pull through this.

Dead on delivery? That’s pretty dramatic (and incorrect). 100M users in 5 days and it’s quite active today - very far from dead on delivery.

They got 100M users to sign-up which ins't surprising because they advertised the crap out of it in Instagram, which has ~2B users.

I would still consider Threads dead because you don't hear about it. You often see screenshots of tweets or links to tweets on here and other sites, this tells me that people are actively using Twitter/X and engaging with it. But as for threads? I haven't seen a single screenshot or link to Threads outside of ads you get on Instagram about it.

What I see is that Threads is on life support and the life support machine is Instagram, if not got IG, Threads would be 100% DOA.

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#63

Post by sjhdjshdjskhds »

theragra wrote: post #42
Jare wrote: post #39

Offtopic but here we go: Once Threads became available in the EU I, like I assume many others, made an Instagram account from my FB account in order to check it out. 2 days later, and without having posted anything except perhaps a "Hello world", my Insta account was banned for generic reason (breaking the TOS, nothing concrete). I only found out 2 weeks later, as I hadn't even visited the site(s) again. Their "Appea…

Also, I constantly receive password reset codes to my email. I am not sure what scammers want to achieve, but it is annoying that Meta cannot do anything.

Message you friends and ask for emergency money.

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#64

Post by adra »

lapcat wrote: post #61
Nextgrid wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> I say this in a derogatory fashion You're not supposed to do that here. > The reason you're insta-banned is that you didn't "engage" with it properly I was literally in the process of signing up. How else was I supposed to "engage"? > Facebook does not want technically-savvy people How would they even know? Like I said, I hadn't even finished signing up yet.

My guess is that you signed up through a VPN, and this is an anti-bot automated system. I'm not a meta employee, just speculating. Remember, VPNs are the collective abuse of all of their users, not just you; same with public access networks.

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#65

Post by lapcat »

adra wrote: post #64
lapcat wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I say this in a derogatory fashion You're not supposed to do that here. > The reason you're insta-banned is that you didn't "engage" with it properly I was literally in the process of signing up. How else was I supposed to "engage"? > Facebook does not want technically-savvy people How would they even know? Like I said, I hadn't even finished signing up yet.

My guess is that you signed up through a VPN, and this is an anti-bot automated system. I'm not a meta employee, just speculating. Remember, VPNs are the collective abuse of all of their users, not just you; same with public access networks.

> My guess is that you signed up through a VPN

Your guess is wrong. I don't use any VPN.

Why is everyone trying to find reasons to blame the victims?

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#66

Post by unethical_ban »

lapcat wrote: post #65
adra wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that you signed up through a VPN, and this is an anti-bot automated system. I'm not a meta employee, just speculating. Remember, VPNs are the collective abuse of all of their users, not just you; same with public access networks.

> My guess is that you signed up through a VPN Your guess is wrong. I don't use any VPN. Why is everyone trying to find reasons to blame the victims?

I have noticed that after I get banned from Reddit for idiotic reasons, the accounts I create through VPN get silently blocked on a lot of subreddits, while the account that got created from home ISP had that problem less so.

It's not victim blaming, just a fact that some sites punish VPN users.

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#68

Post by Nextgrid »

lapcat wrote: post #61
Nextgrid wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> I say this in a derogatory fashion You're not supposed to do that here. > The reason you're insta-banned is that you didn't "engage" with it properly I was literally in the process of signing up. How else was I supposed to "engage"? > Facebook does not want technically-savvy people How would they even know? Like I said, I hadn't even finished signing up yet.

> You're not supposed to do that here.

To be clear I'm not talking about you but about the concept of it "you are not the target market", as if it's something we should consider socially acceptable. I've seen this used as a serious response to legitimize some nefarious/user-hostile behavior which is what I'm "derogatory" about. We should look down on business models that depend on users being clueless and accepting of corporate abuse/malicious behavior and I've provided examples of solutions that could achieve that.

> How else was I supposed to "engage"?

Presumably you're running an ad-blocker or privacy-friendly stack. Or merely willing to use the product by signing up and setting up your account first rather than being nagged into signing up after trying to access loginwalled content. Or maybe you are privacy-conscious and the email/number you provided isn't in any contact databases that Facebook has stolen over the years from unsuspecting users (aka you used a separate email/number from the one you give out to real people).

> How would they even know? Like I said, I hadn't even finished signing up yet.

See above - there's something about your software stack and/or behavior that makes you "naughty" in the eyes of Facebook. Just behaving like a power-user and not taking 10 minutes peck-typing your details in the various forms can be enough if at scale such behavior was correlated with what Facebook deems "naughty".

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#69

Post by Nextgrid »

lapcat wrote: post #65
adra wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that you signed up through a VPN, and this is an anti-bot automated system. I'm not a meta employee, just speculating. Remember, VPNs are the collective abuse of all of their users, not just you; same with public access networks.

> My guess is that you signed up through a VPN Your guess is wrong. I don't use any VPN. Why is everyone trying to find reasons to blame the victims?

> Why is everyone trying to find reasons to blame the victims?

Not OP but I'm not blaming the victim. I'm just trying to explain the reasons why the situation is like that and suggested (regulatory) solutions - the only solutions that would actually work.

Re: How meta built the infrastructure for Threads

#70

Post by redserk »

_fat_santa wrote: post #62
realprimoh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dead on delivery? That’s pretty dramatic (and incorrect). 100M users in 5 days and it’s quite active today - very far from dead on delivery.

They got 100M users to sign-up which ins't surprising because they advertised the crap out of it in Instagram, which has ~2B users. I would still consider Threads dead because you don't hear about it. You often see screenshots of tweets or links to tweets on here and other sites, this tells me that people are actively using Twitter/X and engaging with it. But as for threads? I haven't seen a single screenshot or link…

The tech sphere is far from the only group of people using social media.
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