Fuck Meta and all but this isn't news. Meta litterally said straight up that they would be doing this before threads ever launched. If you have an instagram account then that is also your threads account. This isn't some conspiracy it's exactly what they told everyone they were doing. It's no diferent than linked accounts for google services.

They’re not creating a shadow account, you’re literally logging in with your instagram account.

What this post is implying, is that the user numbers are just existing instagram accounts, which doesn’t make sense because in that case they’d have 2 billion users within the first second.

You can follow/request to follow before the user has actually "created" the account, so they’re lying about which users have done that already, not about how many users they actually have.

Come at me downvotes

Now we know why it was not launched in EU.

Why does everything have to be a conspiracy with some people? Threads literally and directly explains that it uses your Instagram account. They're the same account. Nothing crazy. No magic. No oogie boogie. Just the same account.

It's not creating a "shadow account", it is literally the same account. Threads is just a different frontend for what already existed with Instagram. And Meta would've been stupid, if they wouldn't have use what they already have.

Ah. The Google+ approach to signing up "users".

I fucking KNEW it.

35 million users my asshole - they’re just counting existing Instagram accounts.

ITT: no one who actually went through the sign-up process. It's like a 3 step process. Eventually you get brought to a screen that asks if you want to follow all of your current followers on Instagram. You can choose yes or no to all the people you currently follow, or you can individually select who you want to follow in Threads the people you follow on Instagram. If you select anyone that has not yet activated their Threads account it literally tells you that nothing will happen for now, but if and when the user activates the account, you will follow them if they are public or it will request to follow them if they are private.

There's no magic happening here. There's no shadow accounts...you use the SAME login for Instagram and Threads. They obviously know when you activate your threads account and it will just show the list of users who have already completed the signup and requested to follow you

I think something that a lot of the comments are missing here is the fact that threads, Instagram and Facebook all have been migrated from individual accounts to ‘meta’ accounts. I’m certain that we will see this happen with many platforms unless there is a serious shift in data protection laws. I don’t personally think it’s great that it’s the case but that’s just how it is. The meta platform is quite similar to how google migrated YouTube users to google accounts way back in the day. This monolithic structure ensures that they can keep your user data in a more streamlined database. From a sys admin and a business perspective it makes a lot of sense. From a user who doesn’t care and already uses all of those services perspective it makes a lot of sense. From a privacy conscious user perspective it makes no sense. Then again metas platform is in no way for the user who cares how their data is being handled.

I guess another perspective is talking about interoperability. It kind of feels like they are taking the web3 (I know it’s a loaded term) approach but instead of applying it in a way that allows free development and communication in a way that basically pulls from decentralized/distributed databases you instead get a centralized monolithic model that creates interoperability within their own walled garden.

Actually, to Meta's credit here, they do transparently say this when you make an account.

You can send follow requests to all of your Insta friends, and once they activate a Threads profile, they will see any follow requests they may have gotten.

Why would anyone be surprised by this? Zuckerberg would have to be a complete idiot to not use Instagram's existing social graph for Threads.

They did say "X milions of accounts were ACTIVATED in one day", not "created".

Thanks for the reminder to delete my Instagram account. Though I've never posted anything there, I've used it to follow some people.

Is it too much to hope that all of Meta crashes and burns? It's infuriating seeing Meta, and corporations like them, harvest all of our information...

Can we please stop with the misinformation campaign.

Everyone on here is trying to pat each other on the back by being better than Reddit.

So far no one on here acts differently from Reddit, no matter how much you guys like to pretend lol.

“Shadow accounts” lol. It’s literally your instagram account. Threads is built on top of Instagram. None of this is some hidden secret.

And now Meta knows when she's having her period, the phone number of her gynecologist, and what period products she buys... thanks to the app spying on her health and fitness, contact, and shopping data.

#WTF

Just deleted my Instagram account. I really want go delete Facebook and remove all things Meta from my life.

If anyone was bothering to listen, we've discovered that big tech uses a lot of fraud to make themselves look bigger than they are, especially early on

Sounds like Google+ all over again...

For what I've heard they reserve existing Instagram usernames so no one can register with your Instagram username, so it's not as bad at it might sound

Will "deleting" my Instagram account make a difference at all?

In fairness, it's pretty smart, IMHO: one of the big difficulties in getting a social site started is getting a critical mass of people together to sustain conversation. Facebook already has plenty of Instagram users, so giving them all access to Threads seems like a pretty good way to bootstrap Threads.

Does anyone remember Google+? When they tried to make everyone with a YouTube account also have a Google+ account.

Spoiler alert: it didn't go well