Why Meta’s New Social Media Platform, Threads Wasn’t Launched In 27 EU Nations

Meta’s new social media platform, Threads app went viral with over 55 million users signing up to the new platform in less than 48 hours.

Despite launching in about 100 countries on Thursday, Threads is yet to launch in 27 European Union nations due to policies bothering around the privacy of data.

Naija News earlier reported that millions of users including Nigerians joined the new social media platform within hours of its launch.

The new platform is said to be the biggest challenger yet to Elon Musk-owned Twitter, which in recent times has faced a lot of issues.

The app went live on Apple and Android app stores in 100 countries at 2300 GMT on Wednesday and will run with no ads for now.

Threads, which launched on Thursday in over 100 countries now reportedly have over 55 million users.

This platform however gathered that Threads could not launch in the 27 EU nations because of regulatory concerns.

Threads is a “text-based conversation app” that is widely seen as an alternative to Twitter. Like Twitter, the application allows users to write and share real-time text updates among groups of followers, who can like and reply to them and share them with their followers.

The app lets users port over their existing follower lists and account names from Instagram, Meta’s photo and video-sharing app that counts major brands, celebrities and creators among its more than 2 billion users.

According to Daily Trust, a source close to Meta said on Wednesday that the tech giant was holding back from a Threads release in the EU’s 27 countries as it sought clarity on the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) that will come into full force next year.

The DMA is a landmark law that sets strict rules for the internet’s biggest companies in Europe, and one of those regulations prohibits platforms from sharing data across different services and also restricts companies from directing platform users to their products.

The description of Threads on app stores in the United States indicated that a user’s data, including contact and geolocation information, will be collected and used for advertising purposes.

Meta has already flouted EU rules for its attempts to use data from WhatsApp to strengthen Instagram and Facebook, something European regulators forbade it from doing.

Mosseri told Platformer, a tech news site that it’s unfortunate the EU launch was delayed, but if Meta had waited for regulatory clarity from Brussels, Threads would remain “many, many, many, months away.

“I was worried that our window would close because timing is important.”