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Meta launched its Threads app in the U.S.A. and over 100 other countries earlier in 2023 but denied access to the European Union’s residents. Now no more.
The Threads social media platform, designed as an alternative to X (formerly Twitter) has now been made available in the EU according to a very brief post on Threads by Mark Zuckerberg.
Now EU users can create their own IG-linked Threads accounts just like anyone else where the app is available.
One other thing that EU residents can do with Threads that curiously isn’t available to anyone else in the world, including the U.S., is browsing the app without creating an account.
If they want to engage with someone else’s posts or create their own, they do need an Instagram account though.
This by the way is how Twitter itself used to work before its new owner Elon Musk locked the platform down to any kind of use unless you’re a member with an open account of your own.
Essentially, Threads in the EU works in the same way as Twitter used to, though elsewhere it works in the way that X works now, obliging you to open your own Instagram account to even browse the service.
Presumably, this is a trial run by Meta to see how engagement works with an account-free browsing model among a certain part of the global user base.
However, why Meta decided to test it in the EU market instead of elsewhere is open to speculation.
As a user opening Threads for the first time in the European Union, you’re given the option of continuing with Instagram or conversely, using the app without a profile.
A warning below this choice states that you can browse but without being able to post or interact with content.
Threads originally launched in July of this year and Meta openly called the app an alternative to the former Twitter-now-X app.
This means that it’s designed more for text posts though many photographers have signed on and started sharing their content or projects since the app also lets you share images without the silly automated cropping that Instagram imposes on photos.
Given the EU’s enormous population of 448 million people, of which hundreds of millions fall right into the target age demographic for Threads, you’d think that Meta would have jumped on that market immediately.
However, due to ongoing disputes with EU regulators over monopoly, privacy and data collection tendencies at Meta, the tech company refrained from opening its newest app to the Union.
Specifically, the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) caused problems for rolling out Threads. This legislation was designed to cut down on the ability of big tech companies to supposedly abuse their grip on the digital attention market as “gatekeepers”
More speculatively Threads’ integration with Instagram may also be a problem. Users who sign up for the newer platform can instantly connect through their Instagram accounts and immediately connect to the Threads profiles of all the IG users they already follow.
This ability to quickly scale up the Threads user base through Meta’s established platform may go against the DMA’s bureaucratic rules against what the law calls “self-preferencing”.
Meta has been given until March of 2024 to clear up some of the regulatory hurdles it still faces with the governments of the European Union.
More broadly, Meta has also widened the intimate link between using threads and being an Instagram account holder. As of November, for example, users could finally delete their Threads account without getting rid of their Instagram account.
This alone was an especially malicious way of obligating users into sticking with threads once they’ve joined out of curiosity. It effectively held their usually much older and more established IG accounts hostage to staying with the newer platform.
Threads is growing rapidly but it has also had major problems with retaining users. We’ll see how much user stability the app gains with its new access to the vast EU population.
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