I signed up for Threads against my better judgment | Margaret Sullivan

Can 100 million new users be wrong? You bet

I signed up for Threads the other day, somewhat against my better judgment. After all, Threads doesn't have the best blood lines; nothing in its lineage suggests that it will be the secretariat of social media good behavior or ethics.

It is the spawn of Meta, which we still might know as Facebook if Mark Zuckerberg and his brain trust hadn't decided to rename their behemoth after its many reputation-damaging misdeeds. Those include allowing users' data to leak out, as well as distributing untold amounts of hate and lies and ultimately, giving Donald Trump an invaluable helping hand in his disastrous 2016 election by spreading Russian disinformation. (Recall, too, the scandal surrounding Facebook's relationship with the political data firm Cambridge Analytica.)

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture