Threads vs Twitter: How Meta Benefits from Elon Musk’s Twitter-Takeover

from twitter to “x”

Source: Wikimedia Commons, Photo by U.S. Air Force / Trevor Cokley / Public Domain

On April 14th, 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion. Since then, many changes have been made to the social platform. The most notable change was the rebranding of Twitter to “X.” Now, tweets are being called “posts” and retweets are “reposts.” The logo also changed from a blue bird icon to a white “X” over a black background. But visual changes weren’t the only changes made to the platform. 

The first decision Musk made was to fire 80% of the previous Twitter employees. He then unbanned Donald Trump’s account and made it easier for bot accounts to be created. Now, Twitter users can be mass-tagged in bot posts daily. In addition to this, Musk changed the hateful conduct policy, completely removing protection of transgender people from it.  

There was also a time when Musk considered charging all users to use Twitter. Those who refused to update the app to avoid the changes were eventually forced to when they experienced a series of glitches, such as quotes on posts not being available. For a short period of time, Musk also limited the number of posts users could read per day to 600 posts, which is an easy limit to reach with the homepage constantly refreshing to display newer content. When users reach the limit, posts would stop loading. 

Musk also established censorship of certain political topics, and accounts posting about those topics were suspended. Some suspended accounts included a Palestinian news outlet speaking out against the Israeli government and a group providing armed security at LGBT events. Content moderation decisions were also given to ring-wing extremists, such as Andy Ngo. Because of this change, many anti-fascist accounts were suspended. 

Naturally, dissatisfied users expressed their annoyance with the changes to the social platform they once loved. Musk’s response to the criticism was to suspend any account that spoke out against him, thus preventing users from truly exercising their freedom of speech.

X premium

Source: Squarespace/Unsplash

Previously known as “Twitter Blue,” “X Premium” is another change Musk made to Twitter. X Premium is a subscription service that ranges from $3 for the basic plan, to as high as $16 for the Premium+ plan. The subscription service allows subscribers to edit their posts and write longer posts. Subscribers don’t receive any advertisements on their homepage and can also have monthly content subscriptions linked to their profile for their followers to purchase. 

Whereas previously a blue check mark indicated a verification for an official account, it now appears on any X Premium subscriber’s account. A gold check mark is the new symbol to indicate an official account.  

Subscribers to X Premium can also make revenue if they get lots of interactions with other subscribers, which has caused many posts to be flooded with useless content in the comment section, such as replies with unrelated information in them. Because of this new chance to earn revenue from posting, many X Premium subscribers have gotten into the habit of reposting old content and posting controversial content purposefully so they can get tons of interactions from angry users and thus make more profit. This has led to a decline in the quality of content on the platform. 

the emergence of “threads”

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On July 5th, 2024, Meta—the technology company that created Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—launched a new social media platform called Threads. The platform was created to rival Twitter after Musk acquired it. At the time it was launched, Musk had just instated the limit on how many posts users could read a day. Within seven hours of launching, Threads already had ten million users signed up.  

For users who already have an Instagram account, signing up for Threads is easy. In fact, users can sign up straight from the Instagram app. By creating your account this way, you’re allowed to keep your Instagram username as your Threads username. In addition to this, there’s an option to follow everyone you were following on Instagram in Threads, making it super easy to set your account up. Posts users make on the app are only visible to their followers.

Originally, Threads started out as only an app, but now it has a website, making it a true competitor of Twitter. A new addition to the platform in December of 2023 was a fact-checking service that rates false content from Facebook and Instagram that’s cross-posted on Threads as fake. This lessens the chance for false information from other platforms to be spread on Threads. 

threads vs. twitter

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There are many benefits of using Threads over Twitter. For example, Threads allows users to make longer posts of up to 500 characters, whereas the character limit on Twitter is 280. Twitter users must subscribe to X Premium to make posts with more characters (up to 25,000). Currently, Threads is completely free to use, with no premium options. There are also no advertisements on the platform, but this could change soon. Twitter, on the other hand, has multiple advertisements sprinkled throughout the app, including ones placed on the homepage and even on user profiles. 

Threads also allows users to post more videos and images per post. On Twitter, users are limited to four videos or images per post. And with videos, Threads lets users post up to five minutes, whereas Twitter has a two minute and twenty second limit. In short, users can make more detailed posts on Threads than Twitter.  

conclusion

With Musk in charge of Twitter, the platform has gone from one focused on expressing interests and opinions, to users being silenced and false information being more easily spread. The downfall of Twitter has given Meta the perfect opportunity to compete with Musk. Threads is not only easy to sign up for, but it also offers a lot more opportunities to express your interests and opinions than Twitter does. And with Threads, you don’t have to fear someone silencing what you have to say. 

With all of this in mind, it’s safe to say that Threads has become a worthy competitor of Twitter!