Threads: Twitter Killer or Ad-Infested Hellscape?

Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

This week: Meta launches its much-leaked Threads microblogging app. A spinoff from Instagram, it’s already reached 30 million signups at the time of writing—even before it’s available in the EU. But how is Meta’s DevOps team making it scale?

Analysis: Project 92 launch to the moon

Aside from Meta’s massive overprovisioning of infrastructure, Threads benefits from the ’Gram’s previous work on JIT and precompiled Python. Meta’s fork of CPython is responsible for much of the magic: Cinder.

What’s the story? Sarah Perez and Amanda Silberling report—“Threads, Meta’s Twitter competitor, is now live”:

“Embrace, extend and extinguish”
Threads … allows Instagram users to authenticate with their existing credentials in order to post short updates, including text up to 500 characters; links; photos; and videos up to 5 minutes in length. [It] will soon offer support for ActivityPub — the same social networking protocol used by open source Twitter rival Mastodon, along with other federated apps.
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It’s certainly a great time for Meta to dip its toes into microblogging. [And] Threads has a leg up, since users’ Instagram networks will be built in. … But Meta’s entry into the open decentralized social web has raised concerns that it’s planning to enact an “embrace, extend and extinguish” strategy designed to allow it to dominate.

What’s that smell? Brian Fung sniffs the air—“With Twitter in chaos, Mark Zuckerberg looks to pounce”:

“Musk may sense the unique threat”
Threads is launching at a time when its chief competitor — Twitter — has engaged in multiple acts of apparent self-sabotage and when much of its audience now seems up for grabs. … Twitter, meanwhile, has been stuck in a days-long crisis … after it deliberately throttled users’ ability to view tweets.
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Whatever the reason for Twitter’s decision to make using its platform more difficult, the net result is that it’s never been easier for users to switch away. The current crisis also comes after months of uncertainty about the platform’s future.
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Elon Musk may sense the unique threat Meta poses to the company he bought for $44 billion. … Twitter’s own investors have repeatedly marked down the company’s estimated value since the acquisition. But the events of the past week may ultimately do more to drive users away than almost anything else Musk has done to date.

Why now? Insta. honcho Adam Mosseri explains—“Why Instagram is taking on Twitter”:

“We’ll see how it goes”
Given everything that was going on, we thought there was an opportunity to build something that was open and something that was good for the community that was already using Instagram. … Just the volatility and the unpredictability of what seemed to be going on there seemed like it might present an opportunity. [But] I think it’d be a mistake to underestimate both Twitter and Elon.
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And so we wanted to see what that might look like. Is it a tab in the [Instagram] app? Is it bringing text to feed? Is it a separate app? … It was a hugely contentious debate internally. … A bunch of different people … all over the company were playing. What we tried to do is pull everything together into a more focused effort so that instead of building a bunch of things not that well, we could try to place a meaningful, risky, but compelling bet together.
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And so, let’s be open-minded, let’s try some new things, let’s learn, and let’s adapt. … It would be great if it gets really, really big, but I’m actually more interested in if it becomes culturally relevant. … But we’ll see how it goes.

How does it work? Łukasz Langa—@llanga—brings info:

The backend of Meta Threads is built with Python 3.10. It’s running on Instagram’s Cinder fork that includes a JIT, lazy-loaded modules, pre-compiled static modules, and a bunch of other interesting tweaks against vanilla Python 3.10.

Makes sense: Insta’s infra is Python-heavy. nobleach says we can learn from Meta’s choices:

This is what FB/Meta are known for. They managed to scale PHP for years. They did fork it into Hack. They do have their own extensions. But they’ve put a ton of time and engineering effort into it. They didn’t do it because they thought PHP was a great language. It was because they already had a massive infrastructure and tons of engineers that were already productive. Doing the math they realized it’d be cheaper to keep using PHP.

The same is true here. They spent so much money getting Instagram to scale. They created Cinder to try and fold their hacks/tweaks back into Python. Spinning up some Rust/Java/Nim/Zig/Pony … stack sounds like it’d be fun, but spinning up a stack with which you’re already very familiar sounds like a money-maker.

Break out the popcorn, it’s Musk vs. Zuck. crunchy_one can’t bear to watch:

Emotional Immaturity, Billionaire Style: Both Musk and Zuckerberg need to seek counseling.
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They’re having a tantrum while forcing the whole world to watch. If they were my children, I’d send them to their rooms until they could behave appropriately for their ages.

And Meta promises ActivityPub support “soon.” u/ruaor can’t wait:

Facebook/Meta has done appalling things and generally has contributed to making the world worse. But I’m thrilled about Threads for one reason: Federation.
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I use Mastodon/kbin but the fediverse is still a (relatively) quiet place. … When Threads federates with ActivityPub, I will get all the benefits of Meta’s network effect with almost none of the downsides. … Furthermore, if Meta’s move towards interoperability pays off, other platforms will be strongly pressured to also open up.
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I get the instinct to hate on Meta, most of the time I am on that bandwagon as well. But not in this case.

Sounds suspicious? Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko worries—“Will Meta embrace-extend-extinguish the ActivityPub protocol?”

There are comparisons to be made between Meta adopting ActivityPub for its new social media platform and Meta adopting XMPP for its Messenger service a decade ago. There was a time when users of Facebook and users of Google Talk were able to chat with each other and with people from self-hosted XMPP servers, before each platform was locked down into the silos we know today. What would stop that from repeating? Well, even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now.
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We expect that eventually Mastodon and Threads will be interoperable, and from a technical standpoint, users will be able to follow each other and exchange messages. However, it is up to the operator of the Mastodon server you’re using to decide whether to allow communication with Threads or not. If you are not happy with their decision, you can move your account to a different Mastodon server while keeping all of your followers.

Meanwhile, xl Gman lx can’t believe what he’s reading:

How big of a ****bag is Musk to make Zuck the good guy?