I’m more surprised to discover now that it launched without ads
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2024
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More short sighted corporate greed. It's a great period to try and pull in Twitter users but instead let's add ads for a short term bump in profits.
They'd have to implement ads eventually anyway. Companies do have budgets, and the money to run Threads has to come from somewhere.
Companies can and do make a loss to gain market share, they ae currently doing it with the metaverse and AI.
As twitter struggles under the spastic, they should be incentivising the move for users.
I wish more federated services had built in (optional) support for enabling ads so I didn't have to constantly worry about them shutting down. Especially peer tube.
I kinda wish more federated services also had built in, optional support for directly paying the people hosting the service and infrastructure.
TIL Threads didn't have ads
yeah that is why i chose not to donate to the instance is that my home any longer.
when they decided to keep federated with threads they decided that they didn't need my donations.
You know that blocking threads account-wide on Mastodon 2 clicks and a confirmation?
There aren't any ads on Mastodon. :)
Dear Pikachu, of course you are surprised. Learn how to expect and evade Team Rocket first.
How could those two suspiciously familiar faces with light violet and wine colored hairs possibly be Jessie and James from Team Rocket???
"Since our priority is to build consumer value first and foremost, there are no ads or monetization features currently on Threads," a Meta spokesperson said in an emailed response.
The spokesperson then continued, "But only until early 2025. Then we'll be throwing consumer value in the trash and lighting it on fire. It will be very exciting."
Step 2 of the enshittification.
Consumer value as in number of valuable consumers we can grift later
You deserve a raise. Someone get this deadwalker a corner office!
They’re not even hiding the enshittification strategy. They’re practically teaching you the principles up front.
“First we trap you, then we exploit you. Duh.”
Well, this was the Facebook origin story, so anyone on Threads deserves it.
Is it enshittification if it's shit from the start?
I guess you can always make it shittier?
I never understood the appeal of Threads anyway. Like, who leaves Xitter because it’s toxic garbage and goes to something owned by Meta, who practically invented this particular flavor of toxic garbage?
Sometimes you just grow tired of getting shot in the knee and want to be punch in the face instead
Still no reason to defederate, huh?
Still no reason to defederate, huh?
No, it's not. Ads can't federate. Threads has no control over my Mastodon feed and Lemmy can't interact with Threads at all. Following Threads accounts from Mastodon is effectively an ad blocker.
Might be a stupid question, but can't threads just post ads as "posts" via activityPub? On mastodon they would appear as toots?
Was just remembering how reddit introduced ads as basically promoted posts and recall facebook doing the same.
I sure fucking hope not.
Might be a stupid question, but can’t threads just post ads as “posts” via activityPub? On mastodon they would appear as toots?
Ads in Instagram are posts in the timeline from accounts you haven't followed. Ads don't show when you visit a profile and browse its images. So for example a post by Coca-Cola might appear in the main feed even though I never followed it but it has a little "sponsored" marker in a corner to indicate that it's there because Coke paid for it and the ad placement algorithm thinks that I might be interested in that product. As Threads is a spin-off from Instagram, ads there will surely follow the very same model. Sure, you might be able to follow Coca-Cola's Threads account from Mastodon and see the post promoting their drink that way but Threads just cannot place targeted ads on Mastodon because they don't control that feed.
Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense for targeted ads for sure. Still a bit worried about hashtags being used for ads since I follow a lot of hashtags on mastodon and usually have a quite a nice "organic" feed compared to other social media.
Still a bit worried about hashtags being used for ads
Coca-Cola could have an official profile on mastodon.social and use hashtags there as well. Whether corporations use hashtags or not in their "regular" Mastodon posts has nothing to do with Threads.
Also Mastodon has user-level features to restrict unwanted content to show up in your feed ranging from hiding boosts up to blocking the entire instance:
And since Lemmy cannot interact with Threads content at all, defederating Lemmy instances from Threads makes even less sense. One of the big Lemmy instances blocks Threads but doesn't block CSAM instances. Insane priorities their admins have.
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Ads can't federate
Never underestimate facebooks capacity to enshittify. If they want to send ads as posts they will make a way. In principle the fediverse should oppose for-profit-line-go-up fuckheads, it's always the same bullshit.
Ads already are posts, as I wrote but the main feed algorithm is not in their hand, it's the local feed of mastodon.
If users aren't permitted to follow brand accounts, they're just being driven into the hands of BlueSky. Your attitude isn't helping at all.
I'm changing my vote in the Agora from "yes defederate" to "Hell fucking yes defederate.'
The only surprising thing is that it took this long.
There must be an enshitification chart where time is on one axis and DAU is on another, where it's considered the perfect time to enshitifiy due to peak username or some shit
Imagine that someone has that job. They make and present that chart in meetings. That person exists and is why we can’t have nice things.
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Did threads take off recently or what's the story? I thought it was unsuccessful as xitter was already the preferred platform
I was wondering that too. All I hear about is BlueSky and then suddenly this.
I see official POTUS content on Mastodon because of Threads. I'd say that's pretty taken off
I thought it was unsuccessful as xitter was already the preferred platform
It isn't anymore, ad I expect that to accelerate. The Guardian just announced today that they will no longer use it, for example (although individual journalists may still choose to do so)
Meta auto created threads accounts for all instagram users iirc so they kinda forced thwir way into the market by pre inflating their numbers.
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