In a move that could cost Threads the game, Instagram has announced that the company will now be adding rate limits to its fledgling Twitter rival. Not to worry, though — the site says it’s only to deal with increased spam attacks as a result of its explosive growth.
“Spam attacks have picked up so we’re going to have to get tighter on things like rate limits, which is going to mean more unintentionally limiting active people (false positives). If you get caught up those protections let us know,” Instagram boss Adam Mosseri is quoted as saying, via Deadline.
The rivalry between Meta and Twitter has heated up in recent months. Former Twitter CEO Elon Musk has made several changes to the website, prompting a mass exodus from the long-standing social media network. One of these changes was the implementation of rate limits — to combat “extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation.”
Users could only see a few hundred posts a day — a figure that was only doubled if users were to buy into Twitter’s verification program. As a result, many users became frustrated and quit the site, prompting a search for a new platform that can fill Twitter’s niche.
Threads has come the closest to filling that gap, with over one hundred million sign-ups in the two weeks since its launch. In fact, in one recent post, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that he’s “very optimistic about how the Threads community is coming together”, calling the site “way ahead of what we expected.”
Of course, we’ll have to wait and see how users take this change. Though Threads can feasibly replace Twitter – Meta is certainly big enough to take the tech giant on — it has yet to establish itself as a presence on its own. Thus far, the website has yet to cement itself as anything except ‘not-Twitter’, and Meta’s going to need a fiercer marketing strategy if it’s aiming for longevity.
There are several features that users are still clamoring for, and Musk has proven himself to be an unknown quantity. Though his focus on Twitter may be strong now, the possibility exists that he won’t always have his eyes turned on the company, which means that Threads can’t just rely on the general anti-Musk sentiment and poor decision-making on Twitter’s part. The company needs a draw — otherwise, it could just end up as just being another Google Plus.