In its first week, Threads, the Meta/Instagram/Facebook alternative to Twitter, signed on more than 100 million users. It seems many of them expect Threads to be a “safe space” from the scary right-wing Elon Musk-controlled Twitter.I have terrible, terrible news for Threads account holders. Mark Zuckerberg is monetizing your data just as fast, if not faster, than Musk. With three very different platforms from which to track and mine your data, parent company Meta gets more data from more users to sell and more ad revenue than Twitter ever thought about.
Social media is not a public service. It is a massive global market bringing in hundreds of billions in revenues. The enjoyment of instant connection and the giddy potential of viral recognition come at a price – our privacy.
Here are some highlights of the data rights you are giving to Meta by using Threads:
- All the content you create on the platform.
- Content accessed through the camera or camera roll features.
- The ads you linger on or click on and how you interact with them.
- Any purchase you make, including credit card information.
- Hashtags you use.
- Apps and features you use and how you interact with them.
- Time, duration, and frequency of your activity on any of the platforms.
In other words, everything. To be fair, Twitter is no different. But somehow Meta is better because (we think) Zuckerberg votes Democrat? He may vote blue but he donates purple. His donations reflect his need to keep Big Tech unregulated, and from that perspective, he is perfectly willing to support Republicans.
Now, it’s entirely possible Threads may be cooler or more functional than Twitter. That’s fine. But pretending it is somehow a more ethical or noble choice, sorry. You’re just helping make a mega-billionaire richer.
Zuckerberg holds one notable conservative value: he doesn’t like to pay taxes. Tax information obtained from the IRS by ProPublica and Forbes show a final tax rate of 1.1% for the years 2013-2018. To his credit, Musk paid a higher rate on less income, a whopping 2.1% for the same period.
I’m no Twitter fan. I’m on it (@merrittvox) out of necessity and I check it about once a week. Twitter is where the journalists are. I will likely join Threads eventually. With my luck I will discover Threads around the same time the Russian trolls and jihadists fully populate the platform.
Until the trolls and the terrorists log on, enjoy the honeymoon on Threads. But please stop pretending Mark Zuckerberg wears a spotless white hat among the Big Tech gazillionaires. He’s offering Threads as a revenue generator, not a social service.
Merritt Hamilton Allen is a PR executive and former Navy officer. She appears regularly as a panelist on NM PBS and is a frequent guest on News Radio KKOB. A Republican, she lives amicably with her Democratic husband north of I-40 where they run one head of dog, and two of cat. She can be reached at news.ind.merritt@gmail.com.