this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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[–] small44@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If it's automatic shouldn't the number of user be the same as the number of Instagram user?

[–] VerifiablyMrWonka@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

When you login initially it offers to follow all your Instagram follows. Even if they've never logged in. Its creating shadow accounts for all of them.

When they login initially they find they already have a bunch of followers.

So it's not all of Instagram. It's just all the people who've tried it + all the people they tried to follow.

[–] therealpygon@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

So you're saying they are going out of their way to commit fraud on a scale that would trigger an SEC investigation of a publicly traded company, rather than you just making up the way something works? You do understand how you can have such placeholders not be included in the number of active users...right?

[–] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'd love a citation for that.

If it only took a single one of your followers signing up for Threads to make a "shadow account" for you, I'd imagine the number of accounts would basically be the same as the number of Instagram accounts.

[–] binaryphile@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That really doesn't need to be known, we could tell just from average daily active user counts. If those weren't provided, that's a big red flag on the rest of their numbers because there's no reason not to include those numbers. Active users is the most accurate measure. They might reasonably choose to hype the signups number, but if everyone wants to know actives and it's not provided, that's Meta choosing to hide the information. Not a confident move.

[–] PabloDiscobar@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's simply a database. Your account is in the database and the threads account is an attribute of it marked as "activated" or "not activated". After that it's just a matter of counting the activated accounts.

[–] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Sure, but they're not reporting the number of Instagram accounts. They're reporting the number of, to borrow your term, 'activated' Threads accounts, which only happens when the user makes active and intentional steps to download the Threads app and sign into it.

I don't think it's that wild to call that "signing up for Threads" and reporting it as such.

[–] roofuskit@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Not saying that it's automatic, but even if it was they didn't launch threads in all the same markets.

[–] Dio@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

So it's not all of Instagram. It's just all the people who've tried it + all the people they tried to follow.

It was stated in this thread there are, "1.4 billion Instagram accounts*" Not all of them are active. These so called reported sign ups are active people who are trying out Threads and likely dropping it quickly after.

At the ass end of it, Threads is using your already made Instagram account and I think to this moment, it's still unavailable in Europe. I do not plan to use it because I lack an Insta so I can not verify when it will be available.