[HN Gopher] The Threads Creator Paradox
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The Threads Creator Paradox
Author : hn1986
Score : 74 points
Date : 2024-07-13 22:22 UTC (1 days ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.augment.ink)
| sdwvit wrote:
| My main issue with threads is that O can't browse without signing
| up. Thus, it fails to form a value proposition.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _main issue with threads is that O can't browse without
| signing up. Thus, it fails to form a value proposition_
|
| This is conserved across billions of dollars of social media.
| I'm not on most social media. But a paywall clearly works.
| kragen wrote:
| the open internet demolished aol and compuserve. a paywall
| doesn't always work; it depends on circumstances
| monetus wrote:
| It is federated to an extent now though, can't you use a
| mastodon client without a meta account? I believe you can,
| iiuc.
| treyd wrote:
| Threads has defeded many Fedi instances for not being
| advertiser friendly and many Fedi instances rightly defeded
| Threads to protect their users from their scraping.
| immibis wrote:
| This doesn't protect anyone from scraping (read: people
| publicly viewing publicly published content)
| monetus wrote:
| I wonder why people think mastodon instances aren't
| generally scraped. If it is public, it was probably
| scraped.
| fragmede wrote:
| don't blame threads for that, that was decided for Twitter and
| threads and the rest of the Internet by the LinkedIn vs HiQ web
| scraping case which said that content available outside of a
| login wall is fair game.
| logifail wrote:
| > that was decided for Twitter and threads and the rest of
| the Internet by the LinkedIn vs HiQ web scraping case which
| said that content available outside of a login wall is fair
| game
|
| Q: Remind us who are the creators of all this valuable
| content that needs to be protected against scrapers?
|
| (Spoiler: _not_ the platforms that are blocking anonymous
| access to it)
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| I just now opened and browsed threads.net without logging in.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Why are native creators who bet your platform on day one not
| getting financially incentivized
|
| I really hope this never happens.
|
| It was one of the key decisions that ruined Twitter as it
| motivated people towards engagement above all else. Which is why
| even in sub-communities like startups or tech everyone is posting
| clickbait and controversial takes.
|
| One of the smartest things Threads has done that is unique is
| that it rewards users who reply and engage with the community
| versus posting popular content. It means all of the Instagram
| influencers have not been able to get much traction.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| This is what finally drove me off Twitter. Not the acquisition,
| not the bots, not even the crypto-spam. It was the monetisation
| destroying any sense of good faith or genuine opinion. Just
| self-serving hot takes and engagement bait.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I still do not understand why people feel that they are
| subjected to voodoo algorithms forced on them by Twitter. The
| only things I see on Twitter are written by, reposted by, or
| replied to by people I actually know in real life. You do not
| have to be subject to random content on Twitter! The only
| things that appear unbidden in my feed are ads, and in 2024
| their inventory is so thin that there's hardly any of those.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Vanishingly few people I know in real life use Twitter. The
| issue I had mostly wasn't random algorithm stuff - I used
| the mute button a _lot_ - it's people I previously
| respected and enjoyed reading the content of falling
| further and further into the "post hot takes and
| controversial opinions for engagement" trap.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| It might not be a lot but I certainly saw tweets from Elon
| frequently until I muted him. I didn't follow him. I
| noticed this explicitly because he is so prominent but I
| feel that my feed has plenty of tweets from people I don't
| follow.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| There's two explicit feeds on Twitter. "For you" and
| "following"
|
| One is theoretically good for discovery of content that
| "the algorithm" thinks is suitable for you
|
| The other is what you are asking for a stream of content
| _only_ from people you follow
| jen20 wrote:
| For many years, Twitter would revert the setting to see a
| timeline made up of tweets only from those you followed,
| preferring to reset you to their algorithmic feed ("For
| you"). They stopped this at some point (pre-acquisition)
| but the damage to perception was done by then.
| quillmatiq wrote:
| Author of the article here!
|
| I think you misunderstood the point I was making there - the
| "creators" I'm referencing here _are_ the community builders
| who reply and engage, _not_ the creators they 're currently
| financially incentivizng from IG to post on Threads who "spam
| and scram."
|
| I completely agree with you - incentivizng posting is a
| terrible method to push good practices. But incentivizng those
| who are already invigorating the community (like helping with
| events, promoting other community member work etc.) is what I'm
| pointing at here.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Twitter rewards replies and engagement, and all that happened
| is people starting posting stuff that made other people
| angry, and then fanned the flames in the comments. It's what
| got me to leave Twitter permanently.
| jsemrau wrote:
| i am with you on this. A lessons learned from working on a web3
| platform where people could earn to moderate posts, it doesn't
| bring the right incentives into a social graph.
| CM30 wrote:
| Monetisation in general is a double-edged sword for any and all
| platforms and communities. Letting users make money from their
| work is great in theory, but the end result is that everyone
| becomes significantly more greedy and selfish, hucksters and
| spammers run rampant, and the changed incentive structure
| destroys whatever value the platform might have.
|
| It happened with every forum that attempted revenue sharing, it
| happened with YouTube and Twitter and Instagram and TikTok, and
| this rate it'll probably happen with Threads too.
| jmyeet wrote:
| MOnetization on a social media platform is a tricky beast. It's
| so easy to screw the whole thing up.
|
| Take Tiktok for example. Now you have the Tiktok Shop 1 in 3
| posts is just "I'm sorry to all the people who paid $20 for this
| $1 piece of junk from Alibaba because it's $10 now" posts. I
| guess its lucrative but it really lowers the value of posts.
| "Creators eligible for commision" videos aen't as obnoxious but
| still aren't great.
|
| Paid partnership videos likewise are 99% hollow and disingenuous.
|
| As a user I've been trained to look at the bottom left and if I
| see any of these ad signifiers, I just immediately scroll up.
|
| The creator fund tends to work better because it doesn't tend to
| really change someone's content. That's not strictly true. For
| example, stitches are ineligible for the creator fund so you'll
| find those in the fund will just screen grab instead.
|
| But you also hear of cases of creators getting almost
| shadowbanned while in the creator fund and it's resolved by
| leaving it. We can only speculate why. Perhaps Tktok decided to
| push other creators on the the fyp who it thought would genreate
| better ad revenue. ' But it's so easy to ruin the entire
| ecosystem with monetization.
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| > a platform can't exist to be "an alternative." It should be
| able to stand alone
|
| A good summary of why so many competitors fail to reach critical
| mass
| jxi wrote:
| Nobody has ever linked me or talked to me about something on
| Threads, and the only reason I know it still exists is because of
| annoying ads on Instagram.
|
| Is it a ghost town or am I just not the target demographic (what
| is the target demographic)?
| omoikane wrote:
| Seems like people submit stuff from Threads about once every
| few weeks, but they just don't get much attention.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=threads.net
|
| Unlike twitter where we see a lot more submissions, and many
| get voted up.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=twitter.com
| Finnucane wrote:
| A big part of what made Twitter influential was that twits
| could be easily shared widely on other platforms. That
| doesn't happen with Threads, and happens less now with
| Xitter.
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| Its garbage
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Facebook is well known for using bait-and-switch tactics once
| they grow past a certain size. They've burned bridge after bridge
| over multiple years on their existing platforms, increasingly
| making it difficult for people to reach their audience unless
| they pay up for ads.
|
| During the initial release, Threads seemed like a sanitized
| corporate playground for various big-name organizations to share
| their slop and promotions. Right now I get a lot of anti-Elon /
| anti-Twitter slop or political slop despite never engaging with
| such content. Most of the famous people I follow on Threads are
| just cross-posting the same content on every major social media
| platform anyway. I barely know anyone from real life that
| actually participates on Threads. In general, the tools for
| discovering interesting or new people don't seem to be there for
| Threads.
|
| Finally, this current version of Threads is probably the best
| it's ever going to be. Once enough people are using the platform
| Zuck is going to start shoving ads down your throat, just like
| they've done with Instagram.
|
| Edit: Instagram also keeps giving me notifications when certain
| people make posts on Threads, to try and get me to use the
| platform more often. And even Threads will randomly send me a
| notification that Yann LeCun made some post on Threads which it
| thinks I will really love, despite it being incredibly generic
| and uninteresting.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Precisely. I refuse to get invested when we _know_ it will end
| up like Facebook - completely useless with no posts from anyone
| you actually follow.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| Amazingly, the only notification switch that doesn't exist on
| Instagram is that of disabling Threads notifications.
|
| The probably forgot about it.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > start shoving ads down your throat, just like they've done
| with Instagram
|
| I've never seen an ad on Instagram when using the browser
| version from my desktop. Is this universal, and if so, why?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Are you using an adblocker on desktop while not using one on
| a phone?
| jgalt212 wrote:
| not on every browser, but it is Linux. perhaps Meta doesn't
| show ads to browsers with Linux user agent strings as they
| assume all are bots.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > _I barely know anyone from real life that actually
| participates on Threads. In general, the tools for discovering
| interesting or new people don 't seem to be there for Threads._
|
| Yep, that is why I continue to use Twitter. The people I've met
| there (usually other solo founders and indie hackers) simply
| are more interesting that anyone on Threads, and I can actually
| interact with them whereas Threads feels more read-only, people
| post there but don't actually engage with the replies.
|
| > _anti-Elon / anti-Twitter slop or political slop_
|
| Twitter has an opposite problem, too much Elon slop that I
| don't want to see. If not for that, Twitter would be perfect.
| nomilk wrote:
| The tweetdeck link redirects to a pricing page - I thought it was
| free?
|
| Weird story, but when I first used twitter ~2 years ago, it was
| to follow one specific current event, so my entire feed was one
| single-issue. I loved it! Over time I've obviously clicked on
| content on other topics and the feed got all mixed up with 20
| different topics, which feels so gross and disorganised.
|
| If anyone remembers 'Zite' app (which unfortunately got acquired
| and disbanded ~2014), it was basically a bunch of news feeds
| sorted _per topic_ - super handy at the time for the things I was
| interested in: I could read 50 notes /articles on blockchain
| (then in its infancy), then on airbnb, then uber etc. I could
| read exactly one topic at a time without any distractions mixed
| in. It felt so organised. I really like single-issue feeds like
| what tweetdeck is (I think, I don't pay for it).
| parsadotsh wrote:
| Maybe you can try lists on Twitter/X?
| sunaookami wrote:
| TweetDeck (now "X Pro") is no longer free and they removed the
| good old version. The new version completely misses the point
| of what TweetDeck was. You can no longer use multiple accounts
| at the same time for example.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Zuckerberg bets that Twitter will collapse under's Musk's
| management and that Threads would then fill up the void. But my
| assumption is, Threads will close sooner or later because in the
| long term, it is simply not viable business for Meta. How will
| Meta monetize Threads when growth starts to stagnate and when
| engagement starts to drop? Zuckerberg even introduced ActivityPub
| compatibility for Threads in order to improve network effect but
| is that enough?
|
| We can even end up in the situation where both Threads and
| Twitter collapse and people start to move to Mastodon. That would
| actually be great. More power to the people!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Threads will close sooner or later because in the long term,
| it is simply not viable business for Meta. How will Meta
| monetize Threads when growth starts to stagnate and when
| engagement starts to drop?_
|
| This is tautology. And monetising a 175-million user base [1]
| is not dependent on growth.
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/3/24191074/meta-threads-
| user...
| mrkramer wrote:
| >monetising a 175-million user base is not dependent on
| growth
|
| Sure but engagement of that userbase will eventually start to
| drop because there are so many social networks out there and
| Threads is not that much different than your average XY
| network. Zuckerberg's chain of thought was "Twitter is a
| mess, we can do it better and we have the power of Facebook's
| and Instagram's distribution", but is that enough? What
| special and hot features Threads has? And just look at
| Google; how many products they shut down because of slow user
| growth and low engagement? killedbygoogle.com is the
| testemony....so many good products killed, just because they
| weren't cost-effective for Google.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _engagement of that userbase will eventually start to
| drop because there are so many social networks out there
| and Threads is not that much different than your average XY
| network_
|
| This is the unsubstantiated pillar of your argument. From
| all objective measures, Threads is doing fantastically. It
| being undifferentiated is less of an argument now than it
| was at launch. They _could_ die. But right now they're a
| strong No. 2.
| mrkramer wrote:
| I hope they survive because more competition the better.
| Time will tell what will happen. I also wish Google+
| survived but unfortunately it didn't.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Zuckerberg bets that Twitter will collapse under*
| joemaller1 wrote:
| > This isn't inherently bad - Twitter wasn't a great place for
| anyone's mental health *and is even less so now.*
|
| This kind of thoughtless, evidence-free garbage undermines
| everything else in the post.
| mark336 wrote:
| Zuckerberg copied me. I created a threads-based app and the next
| thing you know he creates one. I was trying to create a twitter,
| message board hybrid. If you want to see the latest iteration,
| its here: https://asiaviewnews.com/gigabots/threads I turned into
| into a AI/tech news summary website with post/reply
| functionality.
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