It seems like a bizarre plot twist in a satirical movie about the world of Big Tech: two competing tech billionaires challenge each other to a cage fight. But it’s not fiction. When it was announced late last month that Mark Zuckerberg is launching a platform to compete with Twitter, Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted: “I’m up for a cage fight if he is.” Zuckerberg, boss of Meta and a fanatical martial arts practitioner in his spare time, did not let himself be known. “Send a location,” he said on Instagram with a screenshot of Musk’s tweet.
A journalist from tech magazine The Verge wanted to know if it was serious and contacted a Meta spokesperson. Zuckerberg’s message “speaks for itself,” he was told.
Since then the plans have become more concrete, writes The New York Times. The newspaper spoke with chairman Dana White of Ultimate Fighting Championship, a major organizer of martial arts events. The tech billionaires had told him that they are really willing to fight each other: “They both want to do it.”
While the cage fight is in preparation, Meta’s alternative to Twitter will be unveiled this week. Threads, it’s called, and according to Meta, the new platform is an app for “text based conversation”.
The conversation app will be released on Thursday and can now be found in the app store. The interface is very similar to that of Twitter: you can like, repost (ie ‘retweet’) messages, set who can read or comment on your messages (everyone, or only followers, only certain accounts).
Twitter’s new competitor leans on Meta’s other social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Users can start following all of their Instagram contacts on Threads if they wish, and they can easily log into the new app through their Instagram account.
Big blow to Twitter
The arrival of Threads could be a serious blow to Twitter, while it has been hanging in the ropes for some time. Since Musk bought the website in October last year for $ 44 billion, the problems have been piling up. For example, he recently decided to allow far-right users who had been banned from Twitter again – as a result of which various advertisers have (partially) withdrawn. Twitter announced in April that its ad revenue was 59 percent lower than a year earlier.
Musk has also laid off more than 80 percent of Twitter’s employees since the acquisition, he told the BBC in April. Furthermore, to the frustration of users, he constantly invents new rules and restrictions. Since last week, Twitter is only accessible to people with an account, while previously everyone, including non-members, could read messages on it. To the chagrin of many, the company also decided to limit the number of tweets you can view in a day to six hundred – which later became a thousand.
Musk’s antics have long created a need for an alternative to Twitter. The main alternatives so far are BlueSky and Mastodon, platforms that are much more careful with user privacy than the big tech companies. BlueSky works by invitation and has already stopped new members due to the great interest.
According to Chris Cox, head of product development at Meta, there is a need for an alternative to Twitter that is “run in a healthy way,” he told The Verge. With this, Cox referred to the erratic way in which Musk runs his opinion platform.
In terms of privacy, Threads isn’t a good Twitter replacement for now. In fact, the new app collects even more data from users. That’s why Twitter founder Jack Dorsey – now working at BlueSky – published a screenshot of the privacy policy of Meta’s new conversation platform. Threads collects information about your contacts, purchases, location, health and fitness, and financial information. Meta also registers your search history and the tech company keeps track of when and how long you have used the app and which messages on Threads you have viewed.
Despite those privacy threats, it is expected that Zuckerberg will be able to attract many souls to Threads on his existing social media platforms. With three billion users on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp combined, tech giant Meta is by far Twitter’s strongest competitor. Parties like Mastodon and BlueSky are much smaller.
Long cherished dream
Threads is a long-held dream come true for Zuckerberg. Already in the early days of Twitter, he made a failed attempt to buy the app. He then tried to do more Twitter-like things on Facebook: the emphasis shifted to news and opinion – which was punished when it turned out that this led to massive disinformation. He also imitated the typical Twitter concept of trending hashtags on its platforms Facebook and Instagram, which allow users to view what is popular at the time.
With Threads, Zuckerberg finally has his own Twitter doppelgänger. And he can knock out his ailing competitor. In Silicon Valley, some are already calling the app the “Twitter Killer.”
And that cage fight? “Chance the fight is in Colosseum,” Elon Musk tweeted on June 30. The tabloid press loved it: a contemporary gladiator fight in Rome between two of the richest and most powerful men in the world? But according to the same tabloids, the Italians would only be open to a non-violent confrontation.
More serious media interpret the situation as typical of the world of Big Tech. It is more common for leaders to bark and growl in public than in other sectors, told psychologist Katy Cook The New York Times. The author of The Psychology of Silicon Valley calls the world of Big Tech a “male-dominated, emotionally primitive” environment in which leaders are rewarded for displaying uber-masculine behavior.
Musk has the biggest mouth so far. “I have a great trick I call ‘The Walrus,'” the tech billionaire tweeted, “where I lie on top of my opponent and do nothing.” But Zuckerberg has been practicing Brazilian jujitsu since last summer and recently defeated an Uber engineer in a tournament.
Musk is less sporty. “I hardly ever train,” he said on Twitter, “except when I pick up my kids and throw them in the air.”