Today’s newsletter has some new usage stats for Threads, plus what Meta execs told employees is coming next during an internal Q&A yesterday.

First, the stats:
- 70+ billion impressions
- 450+ million posts (excluding reposts)
- 4.5+ billion likes

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/14/23795138/whats-next-for-instagram-threads-twitter

Re: ActivityPub integration, it's still a priority for Threads but a "long" way out.

Some other new info:

- The biggest region for Threads (by a wide margin) is the US, followed by Brazil.

- A team of just 3 product managers, 3 designers, and “50ish” engineers created & launched Threads in 5 months.

@alexeheath “a long way out”

This causes me zero surprise. They’ve got a walled garden with 100 million users, why would they bother putting effort into federating anytime soon?

Also, I’m not even sure how they’ll federate and not have a huge #GDPR problem. Hell, I’m not even sure how the Fediverse is GDPR compliant right now, but I think it’s too small to target and there’s no single company to target, so no authority knows what to do.

@Brendanjones @alexeheath @darnell

They're not worried about GDPR:

https://www.threads.net/@robsherman/post/CuhiiEQLl6k?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D

"the app does meet GDPR requirements today. But building this offering against the backdrop of other regulatory requirements that have not yet been clarified would potentially take a lot longer"

Those regulatory requirements are the DMA.

https://www.theverge.com/23789754/threads-meta-twitter-eu-dma-digital-markets

Fediverse instances don't need to worry about DMA because they've not been designated a "gatekeeper". At least, none I know of.

@Brendanjones @alexeheath @darnell

I suspect AP support is a way to mollify any questions over "self-preferencing"

"The EU is expected to provide more guidance to companies this fall, potentially clearing up the confusion."

It could be they argue ActivityPub support is a way to use Threads without requiring an Instagram login. It does seem that AP could be the answer to help ameliorate the EU's heat on a number of fronts.

We just need the EU to apply that heat.

cc @atomicpoet @tchambers

@charlesroper @alexeheath @darnell @atomicpoet @tchambers indeed, I think that is why they're saying they'll do AP support. I'll believe it when I see it, though. They've got 100 million users and counting already, I see little benefit for them to federate, beyond that legal breathing room from the EU, as federating will bring other problems for them.

@Brendanjones @charlesroper @alexeheath @darnell @atomicpoet

It all gets clear if you think thru these three things:

1. Primary goal is to kill Twitter and be 1 billion or more users of Threads

2. They NEED to interoperate and have account migration to do this: it is key for them to migrate over the top 10 percent of Twitter high reach users to Threads.

3. They WON'T use any protocol that takes over their user's identity management on their app.

4. ActivityPub is then the only game.

@tchambers

Account migration isn't part of #ActivityPub and even if it were made available on #Threads, that's one half of the whole equation. #Twitter also needs to allow exports in order for an account to be migrated. I don't see that happening any time soon...

@Brendanjones @charlesroper @alexeheath @darnell @atomicpoet