Threads app signs up 100m users in less than a week

submitted by HiddenFox from (bbc.com)

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[–]Tarrock 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

It's worth noting that threads is giving all instagram users a button to quickly sign up, which pumps up this number. Google+ did this back in the day and it ended up shutting down with 250m users.

[–]binaryblob 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The method Facebook uses to report numbers is not actually specified beyond some blurb involving "it uses machine learning", which means that it can't be trusted. Facebook has every incentive to fudge the numbers, because it's not like the SEC will ever check any of it. No law firm is going to check either, because it's really fucking complicated to come up with a satisfying count in the first place, because you need to have something to answer the question "Is this a bot?", which since generative AI became a thing is basically impossible.

I have no doubt a lot of people use WhatsApp, but WhatsApp hardly is "social media". It's basically just voice + SMS, which is a commodity at this point (Signal, Telegram, Matrix). Facebook is just boring now, which is why Reddit became popular.