A top executive at Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said on Friday that the goal of the company’s new platform Threads is to create a “less angry place” and not to “replace Twitter.”
“The goal isn’t to replace Twitter,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said in a Threads post. “The goal is to create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less angry place for conversations, but not all of Twitter.”
Threads has widely been portrayed as a direct rival to Twitter, which has undergone several controversial changes since billionaire Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk acquired the social media company last fall.
Mosseri also said on Friday that while politics and hard news will likely appear on Threads, the platform is not looking to “do anything to encourage” those “verticals,” which a reporter with The Verge suggested might be needed in order to directly compete with Twitter.
“Politics and hard news are important, I don’t want to imply otherwise,” Mosseri argued. “But my take is, from a platform’s perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let’s be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.”
“There are more than enough amazing communities — sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment, etc — to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news,” he added.
His comments come a day after Twitter threatened Meta with a lawsuit over the new app, claiming Meta gained access to and abused the company’s trade secrets and intellectual property. The platform also alleged that they poached its workforce to build Threads.