Originally published at: Threads is the censorial fake-woke corporate brand paradise right wingers thought Twitter was, and it's going to crush what Twitter has become | Boing Boing
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And I was too lazy to read it, so I asked GPT-4 to summarize for me…
“Threads,” a new social network launched by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, is strategically positioning itself as a brand-safe, progressive platform, seemingly embodying the critique often leveraged against Twitter by right-wing commentators. With its carefully curated user profiles, algorithmic content moderation, and appeal to conscious consumers and advertisers, Threads presents a sanitized, harmonious online environment that prioritizes brand safety and social responsibility. The platform’s calculated approach, while potentially inauthentic, is gaining traction and threatening Twitter’s standing, marking a shift in the landscape of online discourse.
The article effectively presents the unique positioning of Threads but tends to romanticize its corporate sanitized progressivism, missing an opportunity to probe more deeply into potential implications on free speech and genuine social discourse.
… and then asked for a TL;DR;
Zuckerberg’s Threads, a new social platform, mimics the corporate, ‘fake-woke’ image often ascribed to Twitter, using this to appeal to socially conscious users and advertisers, while the article falls short on probing free speech implications.
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I’ve never heard this term before. Thanks, I hate it.
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Just in time for the election.
Well, I don’t know how much adoption Yuck’s milquetoast corporate sanctioned platform will get but Melon’s free speech megaphone is doomed to become another Parler. Should have just gift wrap it to FB from the beginning and save a lot of drama.
Melon underestimated how Yuck’s ruthless at making money at other expense.
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I think this is exactly what’s going to happen. Brands want to land somewhere safe, Meta is that. Instagram already had a younger userbase than Twitter, and so they leverage that, too. If they can get “the kids” remotely interested in Threads (remains to be seen) while also courting celebrities and brands, there’s zero reason to use Twitter or BlueSky and deal with their right-wing or libertarian crap any longer.
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Of course it’s all a con. Threads will be just as tolerant of Nazis and racist uncles and disinfo-spreading charlatans and scammers as the other Facebook properties. Zuck has zero interest in spending money on human moderators.
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Ex-Facebook users turned Twitter influencers:
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It’s all fun and games until Zuckerberg sells your data to a company like Cambridge Analytica in an oblivious (at best) or intentional (at worst) effort to influence policy and the democratic process.
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On the plus side, Facebook already has so much data on their users that they could easily give most people a verified checkmark.
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All these folks out here thinking that brands make social networks.
I cannot overstate my disinterest in hopping onto another bandwagon driven by any of these established hucksters. They’ve taken every functional experience they’ve touched and plowed them into the ground. Now we’re expected to get excited about trying to pick another winner to be Tzar? No thanks; let’s build something functional this go round.
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Yep - he’s in the business of selling ads. And your personal information. Unlike Musk; he understands the nature of Twitter’s business.
But are you allowed to say cis?
And will Zuck hire Musk’s trans daughter?
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I know. It mimics the idea of newspapers of record being an authoritatively edited and checked collection of information and opinion.
In reality, Twitter was never more than a place where lots of people said stuff. As a reporter, you might as well have gone down the pub and recorded conversations, or asked your cab driver what they thought about the issues of the day.
Yet for a decade, it seemed as if “News” had become a collection of Tweets of the day.
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… well, we’re all rooting for fake-woke corporate dystopia over fascist dystopia, right?
That’s what politics is now? 
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I mean, I also don’t particularly like the idea that the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are that, especially for opinions. See for instance all of Fucking NY Times.
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You know the saying. If you can’t succeed, make up wild crazy bullshit to try to excuse your own incompetence
(source)
Trying to get banned on Threads so he can complain about it on Twitter.
(source)
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The American dream that someday everyone, regardless of race, creed, color, or nationality, can be equally fucked by our corporate masters.
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I’m glad I can stan for a better brand of billionaire!
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There are two kinds of news consumers, those who will take a new york times article, and aggressively filter it through TLDR bots, and those who subscribe to the new york times because AP/Reuters is too short.
AI can help the latter, by hallucinating more detail out of a laconic 500 word report.
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while i agree with the overall sentiment that last word rankles because it implies an equivalency between our modern condition and american slavery. that erodes unique horror that slavery was
equally fucked? yes, that captures the modern corporate dream exactly imo
masters? no, that’s very different
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