If Meta can't publish news anymore without paying, then perhaps the users can do it for free. By saying it is not for news, they can argue that it's those damn users not abiding by the rules, while enjoying the benefits of free news.

I saw a "conversation" on it and I would have classified >95% (100% of the comments had no "content") of the responses as bot spam.

Twitter has better privacy features, more users, established culture, won't delete your Instagram account if you leave, doesn't tie more data into one company, and is a finished product.

Threads is just a run of the mill application that could have been written in an undergraduate class for no other purpose than to sell the lie that Meta is growing.

It also used to be the case that Facebook users (people visiting the Facebook website) were counted. Right now, it also includes people that just open WhatsApp on their phone, despite the monetization of WhatsApp to be virtually nothing compared to what Facebook revenue was, because there are no ads on WhatsApp.

Most of what Facebook does, is illegal in the EU, so they pretty much need to start asking users for money to use their "services".

As phones become more powerful, people will just install N messaging applications, instead of just one, like in the past. A lot of people have Apple's messaging service, Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, and sometimes even Matrix. So, previously a "Facebook user" was someone that engaged with Facebook content perhaps an hour per day, but now that WhatsApp user might look at a message for 15 seconds per day (and there is no ad on that "page").

Regarding "branding", pretty much everyone hates Zuckerberg.

I don't know anyone actively using Facebook anymore and Instagram is mostly just a platform to show how great your life is (or how great you pretend to be) to make others feel bad. I think the MAU numbers for Facebook are fraudulent in nature, which could probably be established by doing a survey asking people which products they use in their top twenty countries. The fact Facebook doesn't publish such independent studies suggests they are lying.

Case in point: I don't use (nor have I ever used) any of their products showing ads.