Special Episode: Meta’s Twitter Rival Arrives, with Adam Mosseri

0:00you know pretty soon i'll be posting threats which is what i'm calling threadposts and we'll see if that thing is going to catch on. Threats is not what I would have called it. Let's think of some other words. What should it be called? I'm loading up thesaurus.com. Hold on. So we have attires, costumes, duds. Duds. I like duds. Duds. Hey, did you see my new dud? Yeah, it was. Your dud was a flop, unfortunately. I can't believe you didn't re-dud it. Cool duds, man.

0:38I'm Kevin Roos, a tech columnist at The New York Times. I'm Casey Newton from Platformer. And you're listening to a special edition of Hard Fork. That's right, Kevin. Because this week, Instagram head Adam Masseri stops by to talk to us about the launch of the company's new Twitter competitor, Threads.

1:04so casey as we said on the show last week we are officially on vacation this week this is not an episode that we saw coming or expected to make and i was actually uh literally on the beach with my family when i got the ping on my apple watch from you telling me that we had a very special opportunity this week to interview Adam Masseri, who is the head of Instagram, about this new app called Threads. So tell me, what is it about this story and this new app that made you think, you know what, Kevin doesn't need to be on vacation this week? Well, first of all, I never think he should be on vacation.

1:39I always think he should be with me helping to enjoy that week's news. And look, in America, we do believe in vacation, but we also believe that taking vacation is a moral failure. So I think it's only appropriate that on this Fourth of July week, we celebrate our nation's heritage by coming in on our days off to have what turns out to be, I think, a really interesting conversation. But you know, Kevin, one of the big stories that we've been tracking since we started this show was the sea change in social networks, right? A world that felt very stable ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter has felt very unsettled.

2:10And the one shoe left to drop was, would Meta, the biggest player in the space, would they try to seize this opportunity and see if they could finally get rid of this competitor that has just annoyed them for over a decade? And to be candid with you, I messaged Adam Masseri in December and said, would you please just build a working Twitter clone? I was kind of in a desperate state. I didn't care who built. I just wanted something that I knew would work and that It would be managed in a really straightforward way. And so when I found out it was actually going to happen and that we had an opportunity to talk to Adam Masseri, who's been at Instagram for a long time and who has overseen this project for Meta, I thought, we just gotta hop on the mics and hear all about it.

2:58Yeah, it's not every day that a new social network comes out, especially not one by Meta, which is sort of the king of social networks. And this is something that has been rumored for months that Instagram was kind of working on an app like Twitter to sort of take advantage of perceived weakness at Twitter. But this is really the first time that we've been able to ask them directly how it will be similar to Twitter and how it will be different. And it seems like one of the big differences is decentralization. So unlike Twitter and also unlike Facebook and Instagram, Threads is going to be decentralized.

3:33So Casey, what does that mean? Well, it means that eventually it is going to work with other social networks. So Mastodon is the big one. Both Mastodon and Threads are built on something called ActivityPub. And that is a protocol that anyone can build on. And so in the future, it will be possible for you to look at Mastodon posts on Threads and look at Thread posts on Mastodon. That will also be true of whatever else might get built on ActivityPub. So why does that matter? Well, it just means that Meta for the first time in its history is giving up a lot of control. It's saying, you know, we're going to open up our doors.

4:10We're eventually going to even let you take your entire following off of threads to some other social network if you would like to. So as reporters have been covering this company for a long time, it's hard to overstate what a sea change that is philosophically for them. Yeah, and I think it could actually work. I mean, one thing that has always kept me from wanting to join a new Twitter clone like Blue Sky or Mastodon, even though I am on both of those, is that you have to start from zero. right? No matter who you are, no matter how many followers you have spent years and years amassing, you join a new platform, that counter goes right back to zero.

4:45With Instagram threads, that is not a problem because you can take your followers, as I understand it, over from Instagram to threads. It's going to be very easy for people to just sort of connect their accounts and follow all the same people on threads that they do on Instagram. And so I think if you are a celebrity or an elite journalist or someone else who has a lot of followers on Instagram, you are going to be very excited about not having to start totally from scratch. Well, now, Kevin, here's where I actually do have a confession for you. Because do you know what happened to me about an hour ago?

5:17What happened? I got access to the Threads app. Lucky you. How is it? Well, I've been having a pretty good time out there, hanging out with all my threadheads. That's what I'm calling them. it's pretty wild to just be able to view however many posts you want to look at on a social network without being rate limited you know some people said that infinite posts were a zero interest rates phenomenon but on threads it's like we're back in 2020 baby but how is cat turd 2 uh doing on threads has he made an appearance yet is he has he reached 100 000 followers i have not seen cat turn two over on the Threads app.

5:56In fact, so far, and particularly when I got on, it really was just kind of a handpicked crew of mostly just celebrities and very famous Instagram users and also some brands. So it was, you know, like Netflix was on there telling jokes and, you know, The Hollywood Reporter was posting some stories. Mark Cuban was talking about what a nice community it seemed like Threads have. Of course, it's easy to have a nice community when there's only maybe 2 ,500 people on the entire app. But, you know, look, when you open this thing, you're going to say like, yeah, that looks like kind of a beta version of Twitter with maybe some slightly nicer user interfaces.

6:32But Kevin, here's the key difference. What if it turns out that this is the only difference you need to take an app no one has heard of before today and turn it into a success? Maybe the only thing you need is for it to not be run by Elon Musk. And that is actually the test that we're about to go through. You know, they should just make that the tagline in the app store. Like if Twitter was not run by Elon Musk. So it's been reported that among the people that Instagram has been trying to get over onto threads are Oprah and the Dalai Lama. And I would just like to say that I think our posts would be better than either Oprah's or the Dalai Lamas, and so I'm a little offended that they didn't try to get us in there first.

7:10We're trying to get both Oprah and the Dalai Lama to come on hard fork, so don't say anything too critical of them, because we still want them to return the email. But look, they've successfully recruited me over there. That was a huge win for them. And then, you know, maybe they'll be able to get you too. And then we'll be in good shape.

7:27When we come back, our conversation with Instagram's Adam Masseri.

7:42Adam Masseri, welcome to Hard Fork. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So, Adam, You know, several months ago, when things started to go awry on Twitter, I sent you a message. And I said, please, please, please, would you consider just building a place where I could type my little sentences and have a good time? And fast forward to today, and it seems like you've actually done that. So I guess the first thing I need to say is, thank you for that. Yeah, you get credit. You get 100 % of the credit, Casey. Now, obviously, lots of people were asking you to do this. But I think at the time you said, look, I'm torn.

8:17There are reasons to do this. There are reasons not to do this. So what were you sort of weighing at the time? And what kicked you over into like, okay, yeah, let's make threads? I will answer that question. But I actually do want to give you a little bit of credit. Lots of people have pushed, but you pushed earlier and more consistently than anybody. So you do get more credit than you've given yourself. Newton gets results. Yes. He does. He does. Look, I think that whenever you're launching a new app, it's a big risk, right? Every new app is much less likely to succeed than to succeed. And we know that.

8:46And so we want to go in eyes wide open whenever we're doing anything like this. But just given how much demand there seemed to be for alternatives and given how vibrant and really amazing the creator community specifically is on Instagram, we thought there might be an opportunity to do something in the space of public conversations, of public discourse, more focus on the communities that use and love Instagram. and we debated just building text into Instagram feed. We debated having a separate tab inside the Instagram app and then obviously the option of having a separate app entirely. And we settled on the most risky of the three, but you got to take some swings and I'm excited about it.

9:33We'll see how it goes. Now, what does it look like actually when you open the app? How similar is it to the existing interface of Twitter or Blue Sky or Mastodon or any of these other text-based social networks? What will users actually see when they open up threads for the first time? It's similar. One of the funny things is in these few days of testing with a limited number of people, people have been really hesitant to say the name Twitter in the app. And I keep replying to people like, you can say Twitter. It's okay. All the credit to where it's due. I mean, they pioneered the format. But there are a lot of people playing in the space now, which made us think that there was sort of demand for alternatives.

10:14It's similar. The main tab is a feed. The next tab is search. The third tab is like Instagram. It's the composer. It's where you actually write or start a thread, then your activity, and then your profile. One thing that we know is when you start a new text-based social network, you have to come up with some silly sounding word for a post. Like on Mastodon, I think it's a toot. And on Blue Sky, it's a skeet. So what is a Threads post called? Just a thread. Just a thread. I think in sort of keeping with the toot, the tweet, the skeet, Thread posts should be called Threads. So that's my vote. Stitches has been the most popular one that has bubbled up.

10:51There's a lot of puns right now in the app. The punnage is like way over the top. But Stitch is the most popular one I've seen so far. So when you log into Threads, you use your Instagram handle and you can import anyone you're following on Instagram that is on Threads. you can sort of automatically follow them. But what would you say is the relationship between these two things, both today and maybe how you see it in a year or two from now? My hope is that they're complimentary. I think that there are going to be communities of people on Instagram for whom Instagram is absolutely sufficient, right?

11:24You know, you don't need any more features. We've got a lot of features in Instagram right now. But there are going to be then other communities who really want to engage in public discourse. You're going to debate what's going on in the playoffs. You want to talk about Pharrell's debut show as the men's director of Louis Vuitton, whatever it is. And if you want to be engaging in those types of public conversations or be part of the audience for those, Threads is going to be fundamentally a better place. The post and comment model, which is how YouTube works and Facebook works and Instagram works, is great, but it really does not support public discourse nearly as well as the tweet and reply model.

12:09Elevating the reply to essentially the same level as the initial post allows for much more robust, diverse discourse, which is part of the reasons why we didn't try to just shove this thing into either feed on Instagram or a separate tab. So I think one of the most surprising things about Threads is that it is decentralized. This stuff gets pretty confusing, but it's also maybe the most unusual thing about this. So Adam, what does it mean that Threads is decentralized? The technical meaning is that it's built on the ActivityPub protocol, which is a technology that's behind all of the Mastodon servers and apps.

12:49What that means is there are a bunch of different apps or social networks that can all integrate. And so you'll be able to actually follow people who don't even use threads, but use these other apps from threads. And you'll be able to actually follow people and their content from threads without even using that app and using other apps like Mastodon. And I do think that decentralization, but more specifically or more broadly, more open systems are where the industry is getting pulled and it's going to go over time. And for us, a new app offers us an opportunity to meaningfully participate in that space in the way it would be very difficult for us to port an incredibly large app like Instagram over.

13:36And so to lean into where the industry is going to learn, it's been very humbling speaking to a bunch of people in the community who look at us unsurprisingly with a lot of skepticism, but I do think it's going to be fundamentally good. And I do think it's going to translate into not philosophical, but meaningful things for creators over the long run. Like you should be able to take your audience. If you build up an audience on threads, and if you decide to leave threads, take your audience with you. And theoretically, over time, we should be able to support use cases like that, that really empower creators, and I think lean into what creators are going to demand and expect over time.

14:14Sure. Well, so you're telling me what I want to hear, right? As like, you know, arguably a creator, yeah, I would love to have my audience be portable. I think I'm still struggling to understand why it's good for you, right? Instagram is a centralized social network, and it makes a lot of money. You have a lot of control. You can sort of just build it exactly to your liking. Now you're sort of opening up the doors and saying we're tying ourself to a protocol that might not always evolve in the direction that we want it to. So where did this idea come from to decentralize and how are you thinking about those trade-offs?

14:48There definitely are trade-offs. You're giving up some control, but there are benefits. I do think over time, it's going to be a more compelling value proposition that other apps aren't going to offer. And I think that should attract more creative talent over the long run. Obviously, I don't think a large percentage of creators are interested in this specifically decentralized technology today, but more and more are. And they're definitely interested in things like owning their audience. We also get some benefits. If there are other apps that are really large that use the same protocol, you'll be able to follow content from those servers in our app.

15:19And so, you know, it is a give and take. But yeah, you are giving up some control. It's not absolute control. So for instance, you can build other things into the app that the activity pub protocol does not support, and they'll just be limited to the app. So you don't have to limit the things you build to things that the protocol has already designed for. But obviously, you won't benefit from any of the decentralized opportunities if you do that. Do you think the decentralization piece of this is actually critical to making it work or not? And I ask that because I've spent a lot of time on Blue Sky, which is the sort of the social alternative to Twitter right now, the sort of leader in that space.

15:58And one thing that a lot of people on Blue Sky talk about is the fact that they don't really care about any of this decentralization stuff. They just want a place to go that works like Twitter, but is not owned by Elon Musk. So do you think that the decentralization piece of this actually will result in a better user experience? Or is it just kind of like a bone to maybe throw the company's critics, people who say, I don't want to use another app owned by Meta, I'm wary of what they're going to do with my data or I'm worried about some of the sort of privacy considerations there. Like, is the decentralization piece actually going to move the needle for adoption on threads?

16:32I don't think it's going to move the adoption in the short term, but I do think it's going to move the adoption in the long term. I sure hope so, because it's a ton of work. And if it doesn't, then it certainly was time poorly spent. Supporting a decentralized protocol, you know, with all the different things that we do, you know reporting flows classifying things ranking content it's actually a ton of work it's one of the reasons why it's taken much longer than i wanted to get this thing out the door and we're still actually supporting activity pub protocol at launch hopefully we're fast following with that so yeah i believe it'll move the needle over the long run but i think you know in the immediate future this week there's going to be a bunch of attention because it's instagram and it's a competitive space.

17:16The headlines are easy to write. And we're going to get a bunch of users. And then a bunch of them are going to leave because that's how this always goes. And then we're going to have to slowly build ourselves back up. And to me, this is in the column of things that are, I think, going to be meaningful over the next two years or three years or four years. I don't think it's going to meaningfully change what usage of the app looks like over the next two or three months. I want to understand how you're going to make money from threads over the long term. Is it as simple as you just put ads in the feed?

17:46That's the most likely direction. But honestly, we're not focused on it at all right now. That would be such a champagne problem to have that we had so many users and they were using the app so much that the revenue opportunity was something that, you know, we would have to focus on. Right now, I just want to make something that people love and they use. It's not nearly as hard to get a bunch of people to try something as it is to build something that a bunch of people want to keep using over time. So that's really the focus of the team. I don't want to mislead anyone. We believe in ads. We think they are a way to offer free service worldwide.

18:20We think it's a good thing. But right now, it's just not the focus at all for the app. I think that would be the definition of a champagne problem. Yeah. Well, speaking of getting a lot of people to use the app, it looks like Threads isn't going to launch in the EU right away. What's going on with that? There are complexities with complying to laws coming out in 2024. and we want to make sure not only that are we compliant with the laws that are coming out, but that we can also credibly explain how we are compliant in ways that meet our standards of documentation and testing. And that's just going to take a while, unfortunately.

18:56And I'm particularly frustrated on this point because I've been living outside of the US for a year now. I've been on a total kick with my teams about stop launching things only in a couple of countries and not in other countries. I've met creators who ask me things like, do I need to move to the US to get access to such and such feature? And it breaks my heart. But in this case, it was either wait on the EU or delay the launch by many, many, many months. And I was worried that our window would close because timing is important. And the specific rub there, as I understand it, right, is that the EU's regulations require some sort of fine-grained disclosures about data sharing between apps and like how much threads data can be shared back with Instagram and with Meta.

19:43Is that roughly right? Or what is the specific holdup there? It's not just disclosures and consent. It's also verifying that there's no data leakage. You have to put in place processes and technology that all but guarantee that anything you say, you can verify in usually multiple ways. And so you have to design that system, you have to build that system, you have to build the testing of that system, and you have to figure out how to communicate that system. And we're just under an immense amount of scrutiny. And anytime we make a mistake, even if it was innocuous, even if there's no one harmed, but if we said something and we didn't deliver on it, we get hit hard either by the media or by regulators with fines.

20:29And so it's just the liability is too great. Right. Adam, I want to take a step back and just talk about sort of the overall arch of Meta's efforts in social media over the past few years. It seems like at a corporate level, you all have been trying to get away from sort of hard news and political controversy. You know, this is the type of content that has been sort of demoted in, for example, the Facebook news feed. It's much harder to find sort of divisive political content there. Instagram was never really sort of the first place that people went to have their political arguments and rants, but it has some of that content there too.

21:05But it really seems like the company has been trying to shift away from hard news and politics and into sort of lighter entertainment fare. This seems like a step in the other direction. Twitter is sort of famously a battleground for fractious political debate and controversy. Why would you want to bring more of that onto your platform and your company's products? I don't, I don't, I don't. I want to be really clear. And I want to recognize the irony of saying this to reporters while being recorded. But no, I don't want to lean into hard news at all. I don't think that there's much that we can or should do to discourage it on Instagram or in threads.

21:46But I don't think we'll do anything to encourage it. Obviously, there's news on Instagram. There's news on Facebook. I think there's more news on Facebook and more news on Twitter than there's on Instagram as a percentage, is my guess. But we are less designed for that. threads by being, I think, more supportive of public discourse, I think is going to be appealing to some people in that world and in that industry and in that vertical, and that's inevitable. But no, that's not at all the hope. The hope is to focus on the verticals that are already strong on Instagram. Things like sports and music and fashion and beauty and design and art.

22:21Actually, one of the interesting things I've found, I had so much of photographers in the app right now. And they're really excited. And I was trying to be really nice about this, but I was like, why? I'm excited you're here too, but really seriously, why? And they're like, almost all of said the same thing, which is like, look, we're not here to share our photography. We're here to talk to other photographers about photography. We also want to have conversations about what we do. So my hope is that's where our strength is. But I recognize that we cannot control who uses the app, and we will end up with hard news and political reporters too.

23:01Yeah. And I mean, I think if it succeeds, it's going to be in part because news junkies love it, right? Like, this is the reason why myself and other people wanted you to build this, was like the news junkies are just desperate for a place to write their little sentences. Adam, you can't see this on the podcast, but Adam is furiously waving his hands in like a stop motion. Yeah, Adam is having an aneurysm right now. There's room for multiple text-based social networks in the industry. Twitter is an amazing product with a long history of supporting that use case phenomenally well. The title for this episode is going to be Twitter is an Amazing Product.

23:34So actually, though, speaking of the news and links, Adam, let's talk about the content moderation. And this gets back to the decentralization piece, right? Because one of the fears of a decentralized social network is it just becomes harder to police what's on it. If eventually Threads is interoperable with Mastodon or something else that's built on ActivityPub, maybe people are putting stuff there that you would never permit under the Instagram community guidelines. So I guess I have two questions there. One is just how is content moderated on Threads in general? Does it fall under Instagram's guidelines?