The Musk-Zuck App War: Threads Reaches 150 Million Users, Accused of Censoring Americans and Spying on Them

While the actual physical combat between them seems to have been put away for the time being, the Elon Musk-Mark Zuckerberg rivalry has probably never been more acute, with new Meta app ‘Threads’ directly threatening Musk’s ‘Twitter 2.0’ with its new-found appreciation for free-speech.

Elon Musk, who took over Twitter last fall, as we know, has threatened to sue Meta for misappropriation of trade secrets in its development of Threads.

Piggybacking on a in-built connection to Instagram that automatically gives the platform potential access to two billion users, Threads has now reportedly reached 150 million users.

As it’s already been reported, to dump your Threads profile, which is embedded in Instagram, you must also delete your Instagram account. App or trap?

As you would expect from a Meta product, the ‘specificity and quantity of information’ Thread can access ‘poses a risk to most users, if it falls into the wrong hands or is used to target them’. ‘This is a hacker’s dream’, an expert says.

National Post reported:

“Threads falls under Meta’s wider privacy policy that covers its other social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram. That policy details how Meta captures everything from the information you give it when you sign up for accounts, to what you click on or like, who you befriend online and what kind of phone, computer or tablet you use to access its products.”

They are also keeping tabs on messages you send and receive, details on purchases you make that include credit card information.

“Threads also has its own supplemental privacy policy, which says ‘we collect information about your activity on Threads, including the content you create, the types of content you view or interact with and how you interact with it, metadata about your content, the Threads features you use and how you use them, the hashtags you use, and the time, frequency, and duration of your activities on Threads’.

The privacy policy Threads has embedded in Apple’s app store shows it may collect, and link to your identity, data including your health and fitness, financial, browsing history, location and contact information, along with the broad category of ‘sensitive information’.”

This nightmarish amount of spying on costumers has become ‘standard practice’ for such companies.

“Asked about the app’s privacy concerns, Meta referred The Canadian Press to Threads posts from its chief privacy officer Rob Sherman, where he argued its privacy measures ‘are similar to the rest of our social apps, including Instagram, in that our apps receive whatever information you share in the app — including the categories of data listed in the App Store’.”

And the data collection is far from the only problem detected on Threads. Republican House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, expanding his committee’s investigation into Big Tech’s collusion with the federal government to censor American speech, wrote Zuck.

The Federalist reported:

“On Monday, the Ohio lawmaker sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding details surrounding the company’s communication with federal officials as the Facebook founder launches his new platform alternative to Twitter, ‘Threads’.

‘Given that Meta has censored First Amendment-protected speech as a result of government agencies’ requests and demands in the past’, Jordan wrote, ‘the Committee is concerned about potential First Amendment violations that have occurred or will occur on the Threads platform’.”

Back in Twitter 2.0, things are not as rosy as expected. Even after Musk sacked half of Twitter’s 7,500 staff, it is still struggling under a heavy debt load.

Cash flow remains negative as many advertisers, addicted to the censorship regime of these last years, still toe the narrative that says freedom of speech is ‘lax moderation’.

Reuters reported:

“Twitter’s cash flow remains negative because of a nearly 50% drop in advertising revenue and a heavy debt load, Elon Musk said on Saturday, falling short of his expectation in March that Twitter could reach cash flow positive by June.

‘Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else’, Musk said in a tweet replying to suggestions on recapitalization.

Musk said on Sunday in another tweet that Twitter did not see the increase in advertising revenue that had been expected in June, adding, ‘July is a bit more promising’.”

Musk hired Linda Yaccarino, former ad chief at Comcast’s NBC Universal, as CEO – signaling that ad sales are a priority for Twitter, even as it works to increase subscription revenue.

On Thursday (July 13th), Twitter also rolled out a feature in which select content creators will be eligible to get a part of the ad revenue the company earns, in an attempt to draw more content creators to the site.