Twitter competitor is not allowed in the EU

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, is launching a new feature in its Instagram social app today in the USA and Great Britain, which aims to compete with Twitter. However, the app, known as “Instagram Threads,” will not reach the European Union at the moment because it breaches several directives, according to the Irish Data Protection Authority. This is mainly due to the fact that Meta feeds data from Instagram users, including health, location, search history, and sensitive information, into the new service. independent.

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Meta does not currently plan to launch in the EU

A spokesperson for Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) said the regulator had been contacted about the new service and that it would not launch in the EU “at this time”. According to The Independent, it can be assumed that DPC did not actively block the service. Instead, the tech giant has yet to prepare the service for a European launch outside the UK, which isn’t fully subject to the General Data Protection Regulations or the EU’s data protection rules. There’s no comment from Meta on this yet, so it’s not yet clear if an EU launch is planned.

According to sources close to Meta, the tech giant has refrained from launching the service in the European Union because the company believes that the EU’s draft law on digital markets is not clear enough. Under this law, companies like Meta become “gatekeepers” with restrictions on how they mix users’ personal information.

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Instagram Threads are very similar to Twitter

According to Meta, Instagram Thread is an app for sharing text updates and participating in public conversations. In simple language, this means that threads do the same thing as Twitter. Users can send messages up to 500 characters long. This is much more than the 280 characters Twitter currently offers outside of Twitter Blue and matches the 500 characters Mastodon offers by default.

The big difference with Twitter: Threads is designed to import data from Instagram, including behavioral and advertising information. This is not the first time that the EU authorities have frustrated Mita. In the European Union, for example, the group was not allowed to start any advertising services on WhatsApp that used data from Facebook or Instagram. In the United States, where privacy laws are less stringent, the tech giant is allowed to mix data flows.

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Twitter competitors are fighting for first place

It’s not clear when or if Meta will launch Instagram Chains in the EU. The new service comes at a very turbulent time for Twitter under the leadership of Elon Musk. While the past few months since the takeover have often been chaotic, the situation is now reaching a head. Twitter recently announced that it would limit the number of tweets all users can read, citing alleged data leaks from unnamed services.

Twitter also announced that TweetDeck will be the next part of the company to be restricted to users who have paid for verified status. Twitter support said in a tweet Monday night that the app, which allows users to manage multiple feeds and searches, will only be available to verified users within 30 days.

These actions are not very popular with many Twitter users, which is why the app’s demise is frequently predicted, and potential competitors like Mastodon or Bluesky try to position themselves as the new top dogs. It remains to be seen if meta with Instagram threads can take center stage here. However, the temporary blockade in the European Union is the first major obstacle to the project.