Threads Vs Twitter
I originally wrote this on Twitter and it’s a 3000 word post. Apparently you can post 20,000 character posts on Twitter now. 🤷🏼♀️
So Threads is 100% algorithmic, which explains why there’s so many random blue checked and celebrity assholes on my homepage, that I can’t seem to get rid of, and why blocking them all was impossible. The algorithm will always just show me more!
Well.
I don’t fuck with algorithms. “The Algorithm” is why I stopped using Facebook and why I stopped using Instagram for the longest time. The option to not have to deal with an algorithm on Twitter, is why I’ve always preferred this platform. I’m on the internet enough, across a broad spectrum of devices, that I want my content in 100% chronological order and I want to see ALL OF IT! Not curated bits and pieces the platform wants to show me, in order to manipulate me into buying the products they also get paid to advertise to me.
I went to school for advertising and I have an innate understanding of how it works. I also have this same kind of understanding for the internet, which makes me skilled at being able to figure out, audit, and be an early adopter of most things internet-related. After using it all day on its maiden launch yesterday, I’ve decided that Threads is a step backwards for the internet, straight up. It’s the last gasp death rattle of a mentally unhealthy, declining social media merry-go-round existence most people have been on for the last 10-15 years and I think most of us want off.
Threads is only appearing “successful” at first because people don’t want to support Elon & because social media frameworks are already implanted in the minds of mainstream culture from using the Big 3 platforms for so long: Facebook, Instagram & Twitter.
When I started my Twitter account, most people weren’t on social media & really only the “internet geeks” (usually writers, coders, gamers or general tech nerds) and camgirls were here so there was no framework, no reference to go from on how to use it.
Now that’s evolved and there’s a whole “generation” of cohorts who grew up in the social media era, who are adept at using it and have that innate understanding of it. And that transference of understanding, which was built largely by Twitter and the other 2, is what Threads – essentially a Twitter clone but with strong moderation – is relying on now, and probably why Twitter wants to sue them (she says with 0 research, having only read headlines, as is the new way of the internet also 🤷🏼♀️).
When Twitter started, something happened around the same time, which was the invention of the smartphone. Suddenly tiny computers with apps were in everyone’s pockets, so rather than needing a large, heavy, expensive computer to use the internet, all you had to do was whip out out your phone. This made the internet explode with new users. Suddenly our moms were on Facebook. Then our grandmas and our kids. Fuck I thought the world was over…but also, as if to counterbalance the universe, marginalized folks from across the planet started speaking their minds and showing their worlds on social media, which opened everyone’s eyes and lead to a whole “generation” of woke, or at least woke-aware, or even anti-woke internet users, which I think was one of the best things to ever happen to the formerly-white-af internet! There’s never been a census on the internet and there never truly could be since there’s no way that I know of to send a message to every single internet user on the planet (thank god), but I KNOW the internet is a lot gayer and more colourful than it was when I got here! Which is awesome! 🌈 If it’s one thing I love, it’s accessibility! (Also why I love AI. Also a different topic! 😁)
My issue with Threads, and why I call it a step backwards for the internet as a whole, is that it’s a Meta-owned entity, which means it’s heavily censored, and heavily moderated, just as Facebook and Instagram are. I disagree completely with this sanitization and Disneyfication of the internet and think we need to start moving away from that model for the sake of freedom of speech on the internet. Straight up, I cannot post most of the things I post on Twitter on Threads because the things I post here are too adult and I would be moderated off the platform in a heartbeat.
As soon as Threads dropped yesterday, I went through my Instagram and removed all photos of me in rope, which my partner and I practice as shibari, as a nude art form. When I post these photos there, I put drawings or emojis over my naked bits so I don’t get hit by Instagram’s ban hammer, which I try to adhere to the best I can with the simple understanding that Instagram is a visual medium and they want to be SFW so they’re not banned in workplaces all over the world. Again, straight up. I don’t think they *want* to censor us or stamp out sex work or necessarily have an agenda like that (but you do you), but their business model unfortunately, doesn’t allow for us. I thought by putting emojis over my boobs and not posting nipples, I’d be safe, I mean, the hashtag *is* #freethenipple is it not? And I wasn’t showing nipples. I’d heard Instagram is a lot more strict than that, especially for us common, non-celebrity folk, but I figured I posted rope photos so infrequently, compared to other photos, that I could probably skirt by. I thought I’d chance it. So about 2 years ago, I started posting rope photos on Instagram, and yesterday I deleted them all with the launch of Threads because I know one of Threads’ main selling points is that it’s gonna be heavily moderated and “free from nazis” and pretty much just like Facebook, except in Twitter form. How many friends of yours have said they’ve been put in “Facebook Jail” for posting something pretty tame or innocent? Expect Threads to be a slaughter of those innocents.
I only got put in Facebook Jail once, and it was the 1st time I cross-posted a rope photo from Instagram to Facebook. I was naked, but you couldn’t really see my boobs because my hands were tied in a prayer posture. It was only my 2nd time being tied and I posted it, along with a full-character-limit post about how happy the experience made me and how much I loved this photo and what it represented in my life after being depressed and agoraphobic for 20 years. Facebook didn’t care. Facebook said it was “bondage” and therefore deleted the post and flat out said if I did it again, they’d ban me. I knew better than to bother to appeal, and just waited to see if the same thing would happen on Instagram. It never did. It stayed up until yesterday. People said I was lucky and that I just hadn’t been reported or found out yet. I thought maybe they were kind and smart and human enough to take the post and writing within context and be okay with it, so I left it, and waited. Maybe Instagram just cared about art more than Facebook? They started as a different company after all and grew on the backs of amateur photographers, what was their original philosophy? Does anyone even remember? Or is that lost to the sands of time and NDAs?
Seeing Threads drop yesterday, I knew that if it was widely adopted, Instagram would probably figure everyone wanted a cleansed internet experience and go on a banning spree. My suspicions were confirmed when I saw someone link a Wired article about how Instagram had been recently quietly removing sex-positive accounts without warning or recourse, and I recalled the fact that just this week, I saw one of my favourite, mostly wholesome BDSM-themed meme accounts have to start over after having a crazy high follower count for years with no warning, no reason, and no recourse. She never posted anything remotely nude it was just memes of celebrities mostly. So I saw evidence of Instagram’s censorship spree happen in real time and so did Wired.
I used Threads all day yesterday and saw a different article that stated that Threads had more app downloads than Twitter had in 2 years, which is MISLEADING AS FUCK because Twitter was available on the web too, and also pioneering, which dilutes their download numbers I’d imagine, pretty significantly. Threads is ONLY available as an app currently. The ONLY way you can use it is by downloading it! OF COURSE their numbers are going to be higher! When Twitter started, most people didn’t know how to download apps and were still using phones with physical qwerty keyboards! But I digress…once I saw that mass adoption of Threads was likely, it would only be a matter of time before my rope photos were found out or reported and cleansed from Instagram, which is why I took them all down, and why I will, begrudgingly, remain Twitter faithful.
I don’t want to be manipulated by, or at the mercy of, an algorithm. That sucks. That shit’s so Big Brother – only having a voice if the platform’s censors and algorithm allows it, otherwise you’re banned or screaming into the void – it makes my skin crawl. Fuck that nazi jive, seriously. This is not the way of the internet, it really isn’t, I promise you that. This is the opposite direction any of us “pioneers”, if you wanna throw that word around, ever meant for the internet to go when we were, well, pioneering or whatever the fuck we were doing in the late 90’s-mid aughts.
Free speech and communication on the internet was never supposed to be controlled by mega corporations, we wanted to leave that behind with old media like TV, newspapers, and radio! Facebook/Meta/Zuckerberg would have you believe you’re still free to go build your own websites and live your own American dream and start your own brilliant idea from scratch that revolutionizes how we do things and turns you into a billionaire. He probably thinks you can still do that on the internet, but the reality is that the Big 3, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, have built such a powerful entity we call social media, that the mainstream population has no idea what’s on the greater World Wide Web or anything that came before. Where I live, I know and regularly run into people who have literally never been anywhere on the internet except social media sites and apps, and if they have, it was because they clicked on something FROM a social media app or site, yet, they’re literally on the internet all day, all night, getting notifications for social media things 24/7, and they don’t even realize it! And they’ve functioned this way for a decade+ on their phones!
As an early adopter of the internet who spends an inordinate amount of time showing or explaining to other people how to do things on it (few, almost none of whom are on Twitter), this realization has been eye opening for me. I never knew that having 25 years MORE experience with the internet than anyone I know IRL would ever be an asset or a marketable skill, yet here I am. Since COVID, people are curious! And what I know about them is that Twitter scares them because of the lack of moderation/how easy it is to say the wrong thing here and be cancelled, and the fact that it’s so “open”. Admittedly, the learning curve on Twitter is pretty steep, especially since Elon took over. No one (good) wants to support Elon. And what, like, 2/3 of the planet is on Facebook or Instagram already, so I’m guessing Twitter’s new signups vs Threads’ mainstream adoption is gonna be a pretty unfair fight, if only because Threads has 2 platform target audiences who will think what they’re offering is unique, “enclosed”, safe, and novel and was previously unattainable from Twitter, and because 1/2 of Twitter is fed up with Elon. They’ll want to get in on the ground floor, to better their odds of being the next big, viral social media star in whatever flavour they happen to be. You can already see the scramble on your Threads homepage to be 1st and get the most engagement, the thirst would rival Bounty paper towels, from Quentin Tarantino and Ellen Degeneres to hundreds of blue-checked Instagram influencers I’ve never even heard of, everyone there wants to be the next big thing. It’s like a frenzy.
Me personally? I give Elon $10 US per month to be able to write and edit a tweet this long and apparently see less ads, and I hate it. But I figure his employees probably hate him too and need to eat, so it’s not as terrible as I think it is, plus, so far I’ve never been censored here. I don’t like the nazis around here either, but I’ve never been the target of that kind of hate, let alone all my life, so I’ve always been fine with just blocking hateful strangers on the internet who say nothing worth reading. I can function that way, YMMMV of course. I wish Twitter would moderate hate speech better, but I can’t see that happening any time soon. It’s very American, free speech thinking, and I’m so used to that attitude just in the world, that it’s just another day for me. I may be privileged in saying that and maybe Threads WILL end up a safer space than Black Twitter, who’s to say? Certainly not me.
My worry is that Threads will ruin Instagram for me, though, that in order to get engagement there, you’ll also have to be active on Threads, or that my Instagram content will be posted on Threads, or that I will otherwise be forced to use Threads in order to exist on Instagram, the way they now force me to watch reels. Because that would all suck. I use Instagram, again, with the understanding that they want it to be safe to view in your average workplace or a school, so I knew I was pushing it with the rope photos, and I have other places on the World Wide Web to post those, I maintain several sites for fuck’s sake, so I’m fine with abiding by the platform’s rules. What I don’t have time for is Threads. I barely have enough time with living this crazy nutso life to keep up with Twitter, and I (mostly) LIKE Twitter, so to be forced to divide my time between yet another platform that doesn’t welcome me fully is too big of an ask. It’s a big internet and I don’t want to be stuck on “platforms” for the rest of my life.
The good news, for me, is that COVID was good for the internet because it forced people to use the World Wide Web who had either never really used it, or had forgotten *how* to use it from doing nothing but Facebook for a decade. Hands up if you learned a new hobby or googled a recipe! That meant more traffic to my website from google, despite it not having been updated in years, from curious onlookers who must have remembered I existed and googled me. That’s why I’ve been putting more time into it recently, and plan to start focusing on it more as my meatside, Instagram, and Twitter-based audiences get more and more curious and discover it.
I’ve watched the emerging artists of the cryptoart community on Twitter up close over the past 2 years and I’ve seen firsthand the links in their profiles change from a solitary Instagram account, to a LinkTree with links to ALL the social media they can get their names on (whether they’re actively using the accounts or not), and finally now I’m seeing them change to a metaverse address or personal website URL, which means they’re actively *building* things on the internet beyond making art and only putting it on someone else’s platform, be it an NFT minting platform or social media, which is so encouraging to me and reminds me so much of the early E/N scene! I love seeing it so much!
The internet is in spring right now. It may feel like winter for selling cryptoart, but I feel like the internet itself, the World Wide Web, is starting to come back from a much longer hibernation and I feel like each new website URL I see is like a new green bud on a bare and sleepy maple, whose sap is running, but who hasn’t quite woken up yet. Threads is the snow melting on the ground, a distraction from a much larger picture in a much longer game, and neither Meta, nor Elon wants you to see it.
Okay my blood glucose monitor is beeping and I gotta eat so pardon any typos. I doubt I’ll be able to proof-read this before the 30 min edit window is up so hopefully I didn’t say anything too stupid. Don’t be mean, if anyone even reads this at all. 🤷🏼♀️
Maybe I’m just shouting into the void.
Peace Out, Girl Scouts! <3
