‘Twitter killer’ Meta Threads now under govt lens in US

SAN FRANCISCO: Meta’s Twitter rival, Threads is now under investigation by the US House Judiciary which has reportedly asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to hand over documents about content moderation on the new platform that has crossed 150 million sign-ups.

House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has asked Zuckerberg to hand over documents “as part of the panel’s ongoing investigation of tech platforms’ policies and contact with the Joe Biden administration”, reports CNBC.

“Threads raises serious, specific concerns because it has been marketed as a rival of Elon Musk’s Twitter, which has faced political persecution from the Biden Administration following Musk’s commitment to free speech,” Jordan wrote in the letter.

Meta executives, however, have made it clear that they don’t want news and politics to dominate the conversation on Threads.

In his letter, Jordan said that there are reports that Threads will enforce ‘Instagram’s community guidelines’, which resulted in “lawful speech being moderated following pressure by the government”.

Meta did not immediately comment on Jordan's letter.

As Meta’s Threads crosses 150 million sign-ups, its daily use has gone down miserably, with time spent by users now down by 50 per cent from 20 minutes to just 10 minutes.

However, Zuckerberg said "10s of millions of people now come back daily" on Threads and "that's way ahead of what we expected”.

According to Sensor Tower data, Threads platform’s number of daily active users were down about 20 per cent since its debut on July 5.

Data from Similarweb showed a drop of more than 25 per cent in daily active users on Android phones globally.

The usage time also decreased by more than 50 per cent, it showed.

However, these are early days and as Meta introduces more Twitter-like features, the daily use may go up and Threads can achieve the momentum it aspires for.