this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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[–] [email protected] 112 points 1 year ago (5 children)

"Last week, the text-based social media platform reported a record 100 million sign-ups in just five days."

LOL The biggest bullshit of the year... Meta just created shadow accounts of all Instagram users, without their knowledge or consent...

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (3 children)

100 million isn't that much when it comes to Meta. There's over 2 billion "active" Instagram users that all were prompted to download the app. That means only 0.005% of Instagram accounts fell for it.

I have no doubt that at least that many people tried it out. When I went to the Android App store, Meta was paying for a front and center promotion of Threads.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Your maths is a little off there: 100m is 5%

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

IT'S JUST A FEW DECIMAL PLACES GIVE ME A BREAK 😆

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

What’s a few decimal places among friends, right?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

while you're correct based on instagram's numbers, the other commenter would be correct if it was a British billion which is a million millions. just a fun fact 🦄

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's true, although the long scale billion hasn't been a thing even in Britain for decades.

If it's fun facts you like, try this: English is the clear odd one out, most other languages use milliard for 10^9 and billion for 10^12.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

milliard - love it ty for that. Reminds me of: French: L'ananas Italian: L'ananas Icelandic: Ananas Portuguese: O ananás Swedish: Ananas German: Die Ananas

English: Pineapple
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Right? Seems like he is off by a couple digits, unless we are missing something

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is there a way to check if a user account exists for my instagram account without logging in?

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

people reported already having followers before ever using the platform, meaning all people automatically had an account created for them. that (and many other things) is also very legally problematic in the EU which is why the service isnt available here.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s not hard to understand what was happening.

  • I follow Person A and Person A follows me on Instagram
  • Person A signs up for Threads before me
  • I sign up for Threads after
  • Because we already follow each other on Instagram, Threads automatically made Person A follow me

The issue with the EU is you can’t mingle and mix user data from two separate services.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

"An account was already created for them" because it's the same Meta account. You can just follow people when you start your account without them necessarily activating threads.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Sole benefit of Brexit identified. We get to hand over our data to meta before you guys. It’s all been worth it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I saw this in browser: You can go the person Instagram account and see if they have a thread logo next to it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Exactly. Everybody checked what is this about, then stopped gave shit and here we are

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not to mention all the spam bots they fail to actually ban after multiple people report.

[–] ICastFist 6 points 1 year ago

Bots generate user engagement! Granted, it's bad engagement, but it also generates jobs for the moderator ~~AI~~ teams

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Wasn't it announced to be the case? So it's "just" without consent, which is already bad enough.