Will Advertising Ruin Threads?
It doesn’t have to.
I stopped using Twitter over a year ago, as soon as Elon Musk took control of the place. I don’t miss it — it was already a pretty toxic place, and my tenure at The Recount, a political media company, ensured I had to engage with most of Twitter’s worst attributes.
But when Meta launched Threads, its Twitter clone, I figured I’d give the new service a try. I’d played around with Mastodon, but found it a bit sparse, and Meta’s commitment to the fediverse (still unfulfilled), plus its integration with Instagram (a built in network!) felt worth checking out.
I was early to the party (day one, I think), and over the past few months, Threads has become a pretty good alternative to the never-ending question of “what’s happening, now?” I used Twitter mostly for news, and Elon has been doing a bang-up job of driving journalists into Meta’s arms. As most Twitter refugees noted upon signing up, Threads felt far less toxic and much more welcoming than whatever “X” was becoming. Plus, Threads’ engagement — its comments in particular — seemed far more well intentioned.
But as soon as I started using Threads, I noticed something missing: There were no ads.
