Absurd headline. Gizmodo's anti-tech bias is showing pretty clearly here. This makes total sense as a product strategy. Not sure what's so controversial about giving more reach to Threads posts as this already works pretty well for Instagram stories
I can't imagine being so far gone that you have no shred of the end user perspective left in your consciousness, and no concept of how getting your feed rammed full of a failed social media platform's posts might be annoying.
That said. Facebook and instagram are both already a lost cause in this regard.
A Thread carousel within the Facebook app will drive a ton of passive views, which in turn will drive "creators" to the Threads app.
Perhaps what the article meant by the carousel has lead to an "insufferable experience" - is that its annoyingly addictive. In my experience as a passive consumer - I do find I pop open the FB app and then somehow get sucked into the reels... which as a user is annoying but probably highly lucrative for Meta.
My take is that this is the secret sauce of Meta - whereas any new social app needs to grow views organically - Meta uniquely can jumpstart a new social app through its ability to drive view counts through carousels on its existing properties.
Facebook seems to be of two minds with regard to "social" media. On the one hand, they're forcing awful reels/stories type anti-social content that's largely meant for passive consumption and zero engagement, while on the other hand pushing a new product that encourages participation and engagement and content that lasts more than 24h.
The actual useful social part of Facebook really only needs about 5 minutes per day to keep up with: who has a birthday, who's kid did some cute thing, who is where on vacation, and similar things. They need you to spend hours on Facebook to make money though, and that means adding things to keep you on despite not being what they do well.
I think that's the truly rotten thing about social media. They need you to interact with it in pursuit of their business goals, instead of letting people drive social dynamics themselves. It's less "social" and more "consumption."
By contrast, a private group chat is entirely driven by its participants and the social expectations between them. A private group chat won't say "hey, we recommend you add X, Y, and Z randos!" or try to commodify your social ties.
Meta fails to realize that the initial attraction to Instagram was that it is not Facebook and therefore you can foster/curate a completely different vibe and friend group there. Now that it is becoming entwined with FB (and all their excessive moderation, boomers, etc.) people are looking for the next cool thing. Doing the same with Threads will increase eyeballs and numbers but probably not by much and will suffer the same round peg in a square hole mismatch.
Readit News
That said. Facebook and instagram are both already a lost cause in this regard.
Perhaps what the article meant by the carousel has lead to an "insufferable experience" - is that its annoyingly addictive. In my experience as a passive consumer - I do find I pop open the FB app and then somehow get sucked into the reels... which as a user is annoying but probably highly lucrative for Meta.
My take is that this is the secret sauce of Meta - whereas any new social app needs to grow views organically - Meta uniquely can jumpstart a new social app through its ability to drive view counts through carousels on its existing properties.
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By contrast, a private group chat is entirely driven by its participants and the social expectations between them. A private group chat won't say "hey, we recommend you add X, Y, and Z randos!" or try to commodify your social ties.
Sounds like Threads is beleaguered.