Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter Clone ‘Threads’ Was Briefly Online Ahead of Thursday Launch

Facebook’s latest social media platform, Threads, was briefly available on the web today, providing an early look at the app set to officially launch on July 6. Threads is widely regarded as a clone of Twitter, which Facebook promises will be “sanely run.”

The Verge reports that in an unexpected move, Facebook (now known as Meta) briefly made the web interface of Threads available to the public, offering a sneak peek into its latest social media platform. The full app is expected to launch on iOS and Android platforms on Thursday July 6.

Currently, the web interface for viewing threads is fairly basic, with options to like, comment, repost, and share, all of which prompt you to download the mobile app. If you are in an unsupported country, such as EU markets, you can only view threads at this time. Similar to Twitter, you can view a user’s primary posts in one section and the complete history of replies in another.

At present, only a select few have been granted early access to Threads. Among them are several high-profile brands and creators, including Netflix and Gary Vee. Adam Mosseri, the CEO of Instagram, has nearly 2,500 followers, while Mark Zuckerberg has less than 2,000, so it’s safe to assume that only a few thousand beta testers have been granted access to Threads so far.

In a move that signals its ambition to create a more interconnected social media landscape, Instagram plans to integrate Threads with the fediverse, a network of social media platforms that includes Mastodon. Fediverse integration will not be available at the launch of Threads, but it is evident that Instagram intends to add it soon.

The launch of Threads comes at a time when Twitter, its main competitor, is grappling with a series of challenges. Last week, Twitter blocked unregistered users from viewing tweets, and temporary rate limits have caused issues for users stopped from viewing tweets. Major changes to TweetDeck, a popular Twitter management tool, were also rolled out after it broke completely.

Breitbart News’ Allum Bokhari reported today that Threads will collect a massive amount of data from users, proving that it fits in with Facebook’s surveillance capitalism model.

Screenshots of the app, which is available for pre-download on the App Store, shows it will collect data on users’ health & fitness, financial information, contact information, user content, browsing history, usage data, diagnostics, purchases, location, contacts, search history, identifiers, sensitive info, and more.

Many other apps, including Twitter, collect data on their users, but Facebook (along with Google) is particularly notorious for it. The tech giant recently settled a class-action data privacy lawsuit in the U.S. for $725 million, and has been condemned by both Democrat and Republican lawmakers for the way it has handled user data in the past.

Read more at The Verge here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan