Facebook's Threads is so depressing

I mean it's Facebook, why would anyone expect anything but diarrhea from a laxative loaded sandwich?

The desire to gag upon reading that description mirrors my sentiments toward the company.
Reading Threads made me feel like I had shit myself
What a colorful description. Love it.
That description was a trip.
advertisement for new pants pops in to your feed

Those screenshots are unreal. Did real people write those? Unironically? Screenshots from Threads is going to do for cringe what Twitter screenshots did for humor.

I got the same reaction. I guess now we know why the company is called Meta.

Have you ever been high/drunk and you walk into a CVS and the security guard is staring at you? That’s what Threads is.

This part makes me want to read more from this author.

They had me with
"Threads feels like when a local restaurant you enjoy opens a location in an airport.
It feels like a Twitter alternative you would order from Brookstone."
Perfectly captures the banal uncanny valley of it all

It is an app stuffed with verified users I’ve never heard of who have 7 million YouTube subscribers. They all do Epic Pranks and they spread Positive Vibes and they Don’t Talk Politics Here.

What a shit show. No wonder why depression disorders are skyrocketing.

That thumbnail tho

You wake up and the first thing you see is that.
- Hey, you, you're finally awake. You were trying to sign up for Thread, right?
“You have any games on your phone?”
“Just kidding, I know exactly what’s on your phone.”
He's looking directly into my soul for personal data to harvest
Seriously, nightmare fuel right there
Lmaooooooo it made me chuckle. Like wth

Me before reading this article: "I'm never going to install or use Threads, and I'm not remotely interested in it."

Me after reading this article: "Ok, now it has my attention, but only in the same way that seeing a multi-vehicle pileup in an ice storm does: You can't help but wonder how many more cars are going to plow into it."

I enjoyed the authors metaphors

They certainly painted a picture, lol
Spot on with Twitter having Berlin 1937 vibes
It reminded me of Regular Car Reviews, if you’ve ever seen that.
Not only enjoyed them but I had memories and emotions from them
- I'll think about them for the minutes to come
I ended up subscribing to their Substack account.

Only needed one sentence there to know all I need to. “Currently there is no way to only see people you follow.” Lol so more bullshit like Facebook and Instagram where you get friend, Ad, sponsored post, you might like this, group post, friend, Ad, Ad…

Just another way for Facebook to feed you non stop adverting in between tiny bites of content. We talk about how terrible Reddit is…I don’t understand how my wife uses Facebook at all.

I feel bad for people who will get sucked into this nonsense and enjoy the fediverse through an app that is basically malware come to life.

As far as I'm aware. No big youtuber has mentioned the fediverse in their posts or videos about threads. It's either they don't know or don't care. Unfortunately we might need to battle threads alone
- Gen z and lower don't use the internet like millennials and above. My cousins and sister are all under 20 and use group chats, dischord, Snapchat and tiktok because they want connections with their groups of friends not strangers online.
I think it's like that now cause they rushed release, given Twitter's recent issues.
As of now, there are no ads. The main feed is essentially a jumbled mess of your followers and random popular posts. They say they don't plan to monetize until it's more fleshed out, so we'll see how long that takes.
- It'll happen when they capture the biggest portion of Twitter's users. As soon as that happen enshittification shall descend upon it.
I think if somebody wants that kind of content they are well served already by Reddit, Facebook etc.
Please don't go to Lemmy and try to turn it into that.

I'm so happy I don't have any desire to see it.

The joy of missing out!

Honestly, the article made me morbidly curious, like passing by a particularly awful car crash.

Wow fuck that.

Madlads material right here.

Threads has committed the worst crime you can possibly commit on the internet. It’s boring.

Facebook, whilst it is full of people I know doing nothing interesting, has a place. There are many good and useful communities on there.

Instagram is handy but ultimately full of influencers who have created a lifestyle of looking cool and being paid by thirsty brands, fuck you gymshark!

Twitter is, well full of people talking crap.

Threads would appear to take the worst of all of them and mash it together. I'm tempted to install it but not yet. How long do we give it until it dies off?

Note that the data it collects is the maximum possible - every data -oriented privilege possible. And note that you can't remove it without deleting your Instagram account.
To me, installing Threads to see what it's like is like having unprotected sex with a crack-addict in an alley to see what it's like: I'm not curious enough to take the risks and I'm guessing the experience isn't that great anyways.
- Much like having unprotected sex with a crack addict, it will probably leave you full of regret and probably a burning sensation in your gentlemen parts for some time.
  I think I'll give it a miss for a while.

Eh, substack notes doesn't feel like nearly as much of a bummer because it's mostly a bunch of blog authors chatting with and boosting each other. Not nearly the wasteland of brands and vapid influencers threads seems to be becoming.
- At least it's not Medium.

Such angst and yet no mention of Mastodon as a FOSS alternative.

Mastodon (and other FOSS ActivityPub platforms) aren’t just great because they are open source, they are great because they are distributed.
The Internet was designed to be resilient, famously designed to withstand (a nuclear) attack. The World Wide Web started to make it monolithic and Web 2.0 resulted in a more centrally controlled infrastructure.
When an attack comes from above (like Musk, /u/spez, Meta and Google) one (group of) individual(s) can take our whole swathes of content in one policy change.

Fantastic article, 10/10 read. The roasts are on-point

That article was a fun read. Now I won’t be trying threads but I wasn’t going to before too.

Threads is the Good Morning America of social media.

Haha, wow. This is a perfect metaphor. Well done.

This is overly pessimistic IMO.

Yes, it’s full of brands and influencers posting inane things. It’s also only been open for what a day or two? It’s new and the first big name replacement for Twitter that has momentum.

Remember back when Twitter was new? When everyone cool was saying it was full of inane influencers and randoms posting about their lunch or stupid observations? It took years to be as big as it is (which isn’t that big to be fair) and so useful for things like news, politics, communities, etc.

The internet has speed up since Twitter came out so I think we’ll see what Threads ends up being by the end of the year. So far it has insane hype behind it, something no other Twitter like service since has had. Let’s see if that becomes something more.

Seems pretty hyperbolic. I joined through my insta out of curiosity and I saw like half my friends posting stuff already, saying hi or an update about their life. And all the meme accounts I follow were already posting shit ofc. I'm sure a significant fraction of Lemmy's interactions are based around meme posts, so we're doing the same thing they are. That's just how humans like existing on the internet.

For the record I'm anti Facebook, but you can't get around the fact that almost all your friends and everyone you see walking around likely has an Instagram account. It's just a given and I feel like people here hate acknowledging that.

I believe that threads is currently limiting advertising while they draw users in (before the expected bait and switch after they’ve captured the audience).
See “enshittification”
https://doctorow.medium.com/tiktoks-enshittification-bb3f5df91979
While it is hyperbolic if you only consider posts that are not immediate, that's not the main part od the article.
the point of following ppl on Twitter, for the author, is sharing and reading thoughts about very precise moments, like a comeback in a debate, or a team scoring in a game

It feels so manufactured and fake.

Like LinkedIn

I mean it’s social media, it is what you turn it into. I haven’t been here long enough to get the vibe of this place to tech compared to Reddit, which fucking hates all things tech, but I feel comfortable enough here saying Threads is fine.

Social media can have its purposes beyond chasing hate and baiting rage, my dudes.

Sports, science, news, local info and topical conversations…we don’t need to ham-fistedly slam things we don’t know anything about.

Believe it or not, you can find good and bad pretty much everywhere you look.

just what a thread lover would say.
Check out Mastodon. That's where the real cool kids are.

This was well written and encapsulated a lot of things I've found off about Threads. It desperately needs a timeline that only shows the people you follow

I mean I'm too old to "get it" too, but this blog post just reads like an old man yelling at kids to get off their lawn lol

Because no lifers have taken it over already. Trolls, influencers and everything in between was always going to be the first to adopt it because they have the time to do it. Just cut all that crap out of your life, you don't need it

Twitter thrived with its own micro-celebrities, many of whom were anonymous Socialists with the word “boner” in their handles. It’s not clear if they’re coming to a Mark Zuckerberg-owned social network.

Twitter’s best service was instant takes on breaking news. Are bland, micromanaged Instagram celebs suddenly going to have something interesting to say during a presidential debate?

That pretty much sums up why I never used Twitter. That sounds horrible.

Is there something else of value that you think micro-blogging can provide that causes people to login to it on a daily basis?
The entire point of micro-blogging is essentially "this is my opinion on x" shouted into the algorithm where the algorithm then picks up what is popular among the userbase. Invariably the only thing that provides something constant and new to talk about every single day is breaking news.
- I think it's a horrible form factor for expressing your opinion. The text limit inherently causes reductivism and "hot takes" which lack nuance and spread misinformation. I think it's a shitty form factor for serious topics. If it's something relatively harmless like jokes and memes then I don't think it's too harmful.