Automatically creating a shadow account for everyone on Instagram?

Even allowing people to follow that account?

Sounds like they really wanted to push Threads out the door in a big way.

  • Fosheze@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • fer0n@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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

    • Flax@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, I signed up for it, they have an option for you to pre-follow people for when they sign up to threads

  • Goldmaster@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    This happened to me. Joined threads and what do I see? Signal and instantly had a bunch of random accounts follow me.

    I think I’m sticking to Mastodon and Pixelfed.

  • lem_dart@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • YellowtoOrange@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You need to activate the threads account. People are being asked to follow accounts which haven’t been activated IE created.

      You’re missing the point.

      • lem_dart@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I don’t think I’m missing any point. Have you used it? They’re owned by the same company. Threads is separate but part of Instagram. Other than the user name being reserved on Threads in case the Instagram user wants to sign up, there isn’t an account created. If you try to search the name of any of those accounts in Threads it doesn’t come up at all. (Edit: mistyped a word)

  • varzaman@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • YellowtoOrange@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’d you have to create a threads account, which shares and logins to your Instagram account, for it to be active, but people are being sent advice to follow accounts which haven’t been activated, then this is bad faith behaviour and not misinformation.

  • AlmightySnoo 🐢🇮🇱🇺🇦@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I smell an antitrust lawsuit coming up. Whether we hate Twitter or not, they could have a valid case against Meta here as this shit is anti-competitive as fuck. If Elon is smart enough, and that’s a big if, he could seize the opportunity to sue Meta over this and win. To just be able to recycle existing Instagram users gives Meta an unfair advantage over existing microblogging social media platforms.

  • Noughmad@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    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

    • UESPA_Sputnik@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Which is a pity because the ideas of having “circles” was actually clever. Or at least I thought so back then. I wonder how modern social media would look like if they all implemented that.

      • Noughmad@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        Sadly, it was destined to fail. In Diaspora and in Google+.

        The thing is, while people definitely do have different circles, they don’t like to think about these circles in an explicit way.

        Facebook has had something like this for a while now, you can set visibility settings on every post, but again almost nobody uses it.