Threads, the Twitter clone touted by Facebook executives as the “sanely run” alternative to Elon Musk’s Twitter, has launched with the company’s characteristic political bias, censoring Donald Trump Jr. with a warning message the platform’s first day of operation.
Threads users who attempt to follow the former president’s son receive a warning message before they are allowed to do so.
“Are you sure you want to follow donaldtrumpjr? This account has repeatedly posted false information that was reviewed by our independent fact-checkers or went against our community guidelines.”
The warning message does not even appear on Instagram, which powers the Threads app, meaning responsibility lies with Threads itself.
Threads is widely perceived as a response to Elon Musk rolling back censorship on Twitter following his takeover of the platform late last year. In comments to staff that were later reported in the press, a Facebook (now known as Meta) executive said the creation of threads was driven by pressure from “creators and public figures.”
Via Breitbart News:
The phrase “sanely run” comes from a Facebook executive’s comment to employees that the company has “been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run.”
As Breitbart News previously reported, this is likely a euphemism for more censorship. The vast majority of complaints about Twitter in the corporate legacy media, and from politicians and regulators, stem from the fact that Elon Musk has vocally rejected the idea that social media platforms should censor their users on behalf of the political left.
In some cases, he has even indicated that he will hold the left to their own standards, such as his recent statement that the word “cisgender,” often used as a term of abuse against normal people by transgender activists, will be considered a slur on Twitter.
By opening up the Twitter Files to independent journalists, Musk has also shed light on the close collaboration between the U.S. federal government and Twitter, a relationship that is now facing scrutiny in the courts, on the grounds that the government is using social media companies to violate Americans’ First Amendment rights.
The potential for Musk to upend the carefully-constructed “censorship industrial complex” of the media, deep state, and Silicon Valley has drawn intense backlash from the institutional left. Even before Musk took over, a cabal of pro-censorship NGOs issued an open letter demanding that the platform’s top advertisers intervene to stop him from reversing its Jack Dorsey-era censorship policies.
Musk’s tenure at Twitter, which led to the restoration of a number of prominent conservative accounts (including Donald Trump’s) led many leftist journalists and celebrities to quit the platform for rivals like Mastodon. Facebook is now presenting another alternative platform, although it remains to be seen whether it will be successful.
Breitbart News has reached out to Facebook for comment.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election. Follow him on Twitter @AllumBokhari.