Threads App Officially Launches in Europe
- Meta
Europe – Meta’s Threads is now available in the European Union following a delay, reportedly due to the bloc's rules against Big Tech.
"Today, we’re opening Threads to more countries in Europe," the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Thursday on the platform.
Threads is a new app built by the Instagram team. Like X, it allows you to share text updates and join public conversations but gives you 500 characters, almost double the amount of characters that Twitter allows.
Aplikasi saingan Twitter milik Meta, Threads.
- The Verge
Threads first launched in the United States, United Kingdom, and 100 other countries in July 2023.
The reason why the European launch took five months longer was reportedly due to the Digital Markets Act (DMA) legislation which was designed to control abuse by Big Tech companies and level the playing field with European businesses themselves.
Big Tech companies have until March 2024 to meet those requirements. When Threads first launched, users had to have an Instagram account to use the app.
However, this goes against EU DMA rules that prohibit self-preference. But Meta said in a blog post on Thursday that it had updated its service so that users did not need to have an Instagram account to access Threads.
Another update is that in 2024, Threads will introduce a third-party fact-checking service that will review and rate fake comments on Threads.
Currently, Facebook and Instagram fact checkers rate nearly identical content on Threads, but they cannot rate the content of Threads itself.
