Unless you sleeping under a rock, you may have heard that Facebook / Meta / Instagram (META) has released an alternative to Twitter, called Threads. Other have found the app to be incomplete. Even Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri wrote there are “tons of basics” missing.
What Threads is missing
Reviewers say the app is missing functions like:
Chronological feeds,- Direct messaging between users,
- The ability to edit a post,
- Following feeds,
- Hashtags,
- Search capabilities, and
- Web version.
The app seems rushed. Why did Zuckerburg push an incomplete product out the door now?
ChatGPT
The first reason could be the meteoric rise of generative artificial intelligence which Meta has no answer for. Threads represents a huge new opportunity for Meta to gather training data for its own AI technology. This new data could help it catch up to industry leaders. Microsoft (MSFT) has added OpenAI into a Microsoft Bing chatbot. Google (GOOG) is also working on a chatbot named Bard.
Meta has released AI chatbots in the past. But they were not very good. One, named BlenderBot, was criticized for being simply… not very good. Another, code-name Galactica whose goal was to use machine learning to understand and organize science for its users. Facebook fed it 48 million science papers. It created scientific nonsense, or just provided incorrect information. It struggled to understand or compute math at the grade-school level. Researchers shut down the system after just two days.
It takes vast amounts of data to train a generative artificial intelligence. A generative artificial intelligence is a system that can produce new text, images, video and other outputs like code and music on their own. These systems rely on the data used to train it, and can reflect any biases, errors or falsities inherent in the original dataset. By mandating Threads access through Instagram’s 2.35 billion users, Meta can instantly gain all of Instagram’s data to feed it’s artificial intelligence. By feeding the data from Threads and Instagram into it AI, Meta has significantly increased it ability to train AI to take on OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google.
2024 Elections
Another possible reason Threads has surfaced now is the U.S. elections. Election season 2024 is heating up and it is estimated that $1.7 billion dollars will be spent on digital media for the elections. Surely Zuckerberg want to use Threads to grab another large slice of that pie.
It is important to remember the shameful role that Zuckerberg’s Facebook played in the 2016 election. During the 2016 election cycle Facebook published disinformation produced by a Russian troll farm to as many as 10 million people. Some of the ads were paid for in Russian currency. And his subsequent denial, saying that fake news on Facebook influenced the 2016 election was a “pretty crazy idea.” 2016 should be ring the warning bells for people who cherish democracy.
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Maybe Zuk wants this to be the opening event leading up to the promised cage match between Zuk and fellow megalomaniac techbro Elon Musk.
Whatever reason Zuckerger had to push an incomplete product out he door, his history says it won’t be good for us.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.