Meta’s new text-based social app Threads has quickly gained 100 million users since launching last week, which appears to be negatively impacting traffic on Twitter. According to web analytics, Twitter traffic declined 5-11% over the first two days Threads was available compared to the previous week. Threads was able to grow rapidly by allowing users to sign up with their existing Instagram accounts and bring over some of their followers. However, Threads has not yet launched in Europe due to regulatory issues. The fast growth of Threads may solidify its position as a real competitor to Twitter, which has over 238 million daily active users.
How is this controversial? If someone locked down replied / set profile as private they have clearly communicated their intent to limit exposure of their posts. It only makes sense to limit such users from interacting with other servers which Meta has no control over. There are lots of compliance issues for a company like Meta when they have to operate in multiple jurisdictions.