Is Meta’s Threads a data-guzzling social media app?

This week sees the launch of Meta’s potential Twitter alternative, Threads, and some have been blasting the new platform for collecting copious amounts of data on its users.

There is only a handful of days to go before Meta releases Threads, a microblogging social media platform that will work in a similar way to Twitter, only you’ll login using your own Instagram account and handle.

Slated for a Thursday release, Threads has now appeared on the Apple App store, and with it, a list of the different types of data the app will (or may) collect about its users. A screenshot below provides a full list of data the app can access, including financial data and location.

Looking at the full list of data an app can collect about you can always seem daunting, but is Threads unusually intrusive with our data? Let’s take a look at the data collection of similar apps, including two that most users will probably have already (and both also Meta owned) – Facebook and Instagram.

You’ll notice that there isn’t any difference. That means that data-sucking Meta is already getting the same data about you on both Instagram and Facebook than it will do on Threads. Most notable is the location and “identifiers” sections. Identifiers allow the app to use information about you gleaned from other corners of the Internet (such as your account usernames, device data) which gives that oft-creepy “following me across the Internet” feel.

Sure, but that’s Meta, you may say. They’re the data-harvesting ghouls of the Internet. Well things don’t really get much better if you’re using, let’s say, Twitter.

While not quite as extensive, the most significant data collection points are there, including Identifiers. Which means Twitter is using nearly the same amount of data about you as the Meta-owned products are. They too rely on the advertiser-related business model where targeted ads are essential to financially supporting the platform. Even with the newTwitter Blue subscriber service.

While we may want to (or feel we ought to) err to the least privacy invading social apps out there, the sad reality is that such distinctions among the big social media players are negligible.

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However, what may prove to be the more compelling reason for users to make any potential switch to Meta’s Threads is usability and reliability. Since Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the platform has been mired with rushed product changes and glitches, including the misguided repurposing of Twitter’s Verified Blue Tick, banning links to competitor social platforms, and more recently user’s being limited to how many Tweets they can read in a single day.

So is Threads another data-guzzling social media app? Absolutely, and you wouldn’t expect anything less from a Meta product. But is it really that different from other social platforms that have been on the market for decades, including Twitter itself? Not really – the difference is, at best, minimal.

The reality about online privacy has been stark for many decades now. When it comes to stopping social media platforms and data advertisers from sucking up huge amounts of data about you… well, you just can’t. Not in any meaningful way. It’s the nature of the game and it’s how these companies make their money. Don’t like it? Deactivate all those accounts and throw away the smartphone. You can still pick up a working old-school Nokia on Amazon.