Meta appears to automatically create Threads shadow accounts for everyone on Instagram and allows users to follow those shadows
Meta appears to automatically create Threads shadow accounts for everyone on Instagram and allows users to follow those shadows
Who is surprised?
There’s plenty of things to hate Meta for, but this is inaccurate.
You log into Threads with your Instagram account. There’s no “shadow account”, you’re logging into a second service with the same account and credentials.
I agree that the wording is inaccurate, but some of the essence remains: the second "service" is forced on you. It's somewhat as if anyone with a Fakebook account also automatically had a Whatsapp or Instagram account, or some permutation of this.
It’s not forced on you. If you don’t download Threads and log in, you’re not on threads.
This is akin to saying Google Calendar is “forced” on you if you have a Gmail account. They are separate services that use a common credential, you are under no obligation to use any or all of those services.
Okay, but that still means their user count is fake.
Instagram has over a billion users.
Their user count is the number of Instagram users that have activated threads.
If you follow someone who hasn’t, it will automatically follow them if they do activate. That doesn’t mean they created some shadow profile.
Yeah, they probably just duplicated the username DB from instagram, so whenever someone starts using Threads, their username will already be “reserved” for them in an empty profile.
It’s probably even more simple than that - a single DB with a flag for threads_enabled = true/false.
They made it super clear in advance this is how it would work, the app is called “Threads, an Instagram app”, but as always people froth at the mouth for any opportunity to say “Zuckerberg bad”.
That’s not some big secret. Everyone knows meta sucks. We don’t need to make stuff up to prove that. They do that on their own.