Mark Zuckerberg’s, Meta revealed plans to launch an app that will rival Twitter during a companywide meeting on Thursday. Meta is known for taking features from other social media apps and implementing them across its social media platforms. It doesn’t matter if it’s Reels inspired by TikTok, Stories inspired by Snapchat, or Communities inspired by Discord—Meta’s most popular apps, like Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, have it all.
There have been persistent rumors that Meta is developing a Twitter rival for years. Even though the company’s name is still unclear a recent report claimed that it may be more similar to Twitter’s rivals. As soon as the story broke, Linda Yaccarino, the new CEO of Twitter, said, “Game On”.
Senior Meta officials gave staff a sneak peek of their impending Twitter competitor during a company-wide meeting last week company-wide meeting last week, senior Meta officers showed employees a preview of their impending Twitter rival. According to the preview provided to The Verge, this would be a standalone application from Meta with functionality and an interface that’s similar to Twitter. The codename for the platform is “Project 92.”
According to the screenshot, Meta will let users to login in using their Facebook or Instagram IDs, saving them the hassle of creating new IDs. Users can respond to a prompt in the manner of Twitter and invite others to like, comment, and re-share their responses with or without additional commentary (essentially, to retweet). The screenshot also implies that users would be able to build threads, which are collections of posts that are made one after the other.
The report also indicates that Instagram’s account system would be used by the Twitter-inspired Meta app to populate a user’s information. Chris Cox, the chief product officer of Meta, is believed to have stated during the conference that the company was already in contact with notable personalities like Oprah and the Dalai Lama to join the platform to encourage people to download the “Project 92” app.
Cox added, “We’ve been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run, that they believe that they can trust and rely upon for distribution.”
Elon Musk’s “Hardcore” Approach and Concerns about Hate Speech on Twitter
Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, is in the limelight for his “hardcore” approach to running the micro-social media network, thus it appears that his remarks are a soft jibe at Musk. As Musk continues to rapidly change his team and working culture, forcing several senior executives to leave, many analysts have openly raised their concerns about hate speech on Twitter. Additionally, it is said that Twitter is refusing to pay its monthly subscription to Google Cloud. Without a reputable cloud service managing the information flow on the platform, Twitter may be subject to security and privacy risks.
However, Meta platforms also have a mixed reputation in terms of issues relating to safety and privacy. The Wall Street Journal published a report last week claiming that Instagram’s algorithms advertised the sale of illicit “child sex material” on the platform. The company has strict rules regarding CSAM (child sexual abuse material), Meta responded. Even if the company claimed to have put all the rules and measures in place, it won’t be surprising if new pages begin to appear every day that share this type of stuff.
When introducing its Twitter rivals, Project 92, Meta would highlight similar measures. If the Twitter-like app provides end-to-end encryption security for direct messages, it will be interesting to watch.
