Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Threads, an Instagram app

apps.apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

901–910 of 1001 posts

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#901

Post by DANmode »

afavour wrote: post #881
ymolodtsov wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see any sign Meta understands what made Twitter great Well, Elon definitely doesn't. > the fact that they're heavily branding it with Instagram, using Instagram logins etc suggests to me that they're just looking for another angle to vacuum up user data They're using the most popular social network which they happen to own, which already has pre-built social connections for most people who might want to try…

> They're using the most popular social network which they happen to own, which already has pre-built social connections for most people who might want to try Threads For sure. And I’m not writing off Threads being a popular app, just the notion that it’ll displace Twitter. To me Twitter is in a different social space than Instagram: the town square rather than the pub with my friends. Even if I move all my pub frien…

If they separate and build it out sufficiently, it could look and feel like a different social space altogether.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#902

Post by zenmaster10665 »

shreyshnaccount wrote: post #681
zenmaster10665 wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with this theory is that there is no obvious way to have both deep interoperability between apps as well as innovation. Interoperability is a contract,and that contract will slow down product evolution and lead to worse consumer products.

That's certainly not true. Interoperability for basic features such as text, photos, videos, posts and comments doesn't mean apps are not free to add more features. Also, having an extendable framework will easily account for this

some form of interoperability is already happening for some of those data types (or at least starting with portability). See the Data Transfer Initiative (dti.org)

The issue is that forced interoperability will lead to platforms creating an interoperable (and less fully-featured) version of their app to suit the regulations.

I do think that interop is important, but I think it is a harder problem than most people think.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#903

Post by DANmode »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #231
mullingitover wrote: post #93

I'm calling it now, this is going to hollow out twitter in extremely rapid fashion. I give twitter a couple of months once this launches, they'll do a Wile E Coyote where they walk off the cliff, followed by plummeting. Meta is going to grind the blue bird to a fine powder, not saying this as a Meta fan, just a casual observer. There's massive pent-up demand for an alternative, and so far Bluesky and Mastodon haven't…

Agreed. When Instagram added stories, my entire Snapchat friendlist disappeared within a month and they were all posting to Instagram instead. I think the same will happen here. But it will be lopsided toward people who are already more popular on Instagram than they are on Twitter, which is a lot of social/non-professional audiences. I expect that Twitter accounts with large followings will continue posting there, a…

> people who are already more popular on Instagram than they are on Twitter, which is a lot of social/non-professional audiences

This is regional/network-effect based.

I've seen it situated the exact opposite opposite direction in some locales.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#904

Post by inDigiNeous »

christophilus wrote: post #739
afavour wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't disagree more. I don't see any sign Meta understands what made Twitter great, and the fact that they're heavily branding it with Instagram, using Instagram logins etc suggests to me that they're just looking for another angle to vacuum up user data. Maybe I'm unusual but the accounts I follow on Instagram and Twitter do not have a huge amount of crossover so the fact that their onboarding process tries to…

Serious question: for all of you “Musk / Zuck doesn’t get it” folks, what made Twitter great? I’ve never understood the appeal of it. Count me in the camp of those who don’t understand what made Twitter great.

Twitter is a hard platform to get into I think, I used to think for a long time that what good is this thing for. Then it kinda clicked, at least for me it's not about tweeting stuff, but it's more about finding the people who are interesting and participating in discussions.

It takes time to find people to follow who share information that you are interested in. It also takes constant teaching and hiding the info you don't want to see, but once you build a good following of people (for me personally sw dev and tech and so on), the value you can find out from just seeing what people are working on and sharing their findings, can be very valuable and entertaining.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#905

Post by inDigiNeous »

1270018080 wrote: post #158
babl-yc wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key thing for me is whether it's really a text focused app or they ruin it by trying to cross promote Instagram/Reels and turn it into a mindless time suck. If they get the little details right, I see this as the only real competition to Twitter right now. After trying Mastodon for a few months, it's certainly not it.

I have a feeling it'll have the intellectual quality of the Instagram comment section, which is worse than the Facebook comment section, which is 10x worse than Twitter. But I agree if there is heavy integration with the rest of Meta's products I'll be less happy.

Hopefully they really put effort into the web part of the product, I mean really writing text on a phone or even a tablet is not so easy.

But I'm guessing they wont do that, as Meta wants lock in and registration, and following all your data.

At least current version of instagram on the web is pretty lame, if you don't install some browser extensions.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#906

Post by neop1x »

publius_0xf3 wrote: post #118

I was never able to create an Instagram account because Instagram would just instantly ban any account I created for paranoid anti-spam reasons. Apparently this is [a common problem]( https://old.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/85wbk1/banned_im... ). So I'm not looking forward to trying to sign up with them.

Same here. Banned instantly for no reason. The problem is that some official entities like Fire departments are using these closed for-profit services and at the same time those services are adding login screens even for just read access.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#907

Post by sangnoir »

geokon wrote: post #666
bertil wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a text-based app, which dramatically changes expectations. Instagram Stories was, like Instagram, photos and videos. That allows consistency in how things work (not that it does in practice because some gestures were based on shared expectations with Facebook Stories, others with TikTok or Snapchat, but… you get it). Facebook designers have suffered quite a bit from dealing with very inconsistent media format: c…

Do you have any thoughts on why they attached to the IG graph and not the FB graph? Maybe I'm in a bubble, IG seems very low text, low drama, low politics. Not very Twitter-y

Does Facebook have globally-unique user handles? Instagram seems to the the only Meta property where the handle is not PII (real name or phone number).

Among Meta properties, Instagram is also the closest to Twitter as an interest-based social network (rather than limited to people-you-already-know)

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#908

Post by sangnoir »

lolsal wrote: post #833
hagbarth wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the standalone app as a user. I don't have IG installed and I would not install it to get Threads. But I would install a standalone app. I'm sure I'm not in the majority though.

Make sure you note all of the data they link to you in the privacy section. This app is no different from instagram or fb in that regard.

Is Twitter better?

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#909

Post by TobTobXX »

runeks wrote: post #765
modernerd wrote: post #481

“Soon, you’ll be able to follow and interact with people on other fediverse platforms, like Mastodon. They can also find you with your full username @username@threads.net.” [1] Did not expect Fediverse integration from Meta. [1] https://9to5google.com/2023/07/03/threads-instagram-app-coun...

So they allow Threads-to-Mastodon, but they key question is whether they allow Mastodon-to-Threads. The former is just a way to recruit users to their platform, while the latter gives access to their platform without being a user.

Read the parent quote again, it's quite clear it's 2-ways.

Re: Threads, an Instagram app

#910

Post by omeid2 »

sangnoir wrote: post #907
geokon wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any thoughts on why they attached to the IG graph and not the FB graph? Maybe I'm in a bubble, IG seems very low text, low drama, low politics. Not very Twitter-y

Does Facebook have globally-unique user handles? Instagram seems to the the only Meta property where the handle is not PII (real name or phone number). Among Meta properties, Instagram is also the closest to Twitter as an interest-based social network (rather than limited to people-you-already-know)

Any unique identifier assigned to an "identifiable" person is PII. It doesn't matter if it is an IRC or Instagram handler, or a twitter username. It is PII if it can be associated to a person.

Euro/GDPR: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/

‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly.

The keyword here is indirectly.

Australia: https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2019C00025

personal information means information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable.

(a) whether the information or opinion is true or not; and (b) whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not.

The keyword here "reasonably identifiable".

Post reply on HN