White House joins Threads social media platform

The White House on Monday started accounts on Threads, the social media platform launched by Meta as a rival to X.

The administration announced the creation of accounts for President Biden, first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, as well as accounts for the White House and a Spanish version, La Casa Blanca.

The White House account posted “The wait is Joe-ver” on Monday afternoon, shortly after officially launching on the platform.

“We are committed to meeting people where they are,” a White House official said in a statement. “Since the beginning of the administration we’ve used traditional media, digital media, SMS programs, and other innovative ways to reach Americans as they communicate today.”

Meta, which also owns Facebook, launched Threads in July as a rival to X, formerly known as Twitter. Tens of millions of people joined Threads within days of its launch.

The official said Threads is “an additional way” to communicate with the public about the administration’s agenda. The launch on the new platform was in the works for “several weeks,” the official said.

But the timing comes as X has been under scrutiny because of inflammatory posts by owner Elon Musk. Musk, who bought the site last year and led its rebranding as X, last week promoted an antisemitic social media post.

After one user posted, “To the cowards hiding behind the anonymity of the internet and posting ‘Hitler was right’: You got something you want to say?” another user responded, “Okay. Jewish [communities] have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.”

Musk replied to that post: “You have said the actual truth.”

The White House condemned Musk’s post as “unacceptable” but has not said whether they’ve considered leaving the platform.