Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads? The app is vapid, boring and destined to fail | Siva Vaidhyanathan

The blandness of the Threads experience makes me yearn for the trolls of Twitter

What if someone invented Instagram without the cute golden retriever photos, without any of the fun? What if someone invented Twitter without any of the serious and snarky back-and-forth about news, politics, ideas, or essential information about weather or pandemics.

Someone did. That someone is the one company that didn't have to do much to continue to dominate the world of social media and online advertising: Meta. The largest and richest social media company in the world and one of the most powerful surveillance and propaganda forces in the world, has introduced something that almost looks and feels like Twitter and almost looks and feels like Instagram.

Siva Vaidhyanathan is a professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018). He is also Guardian US columnist