Meta unspools Threads
This is Platformer, a newsletter on the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy from Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer. Sign up here.
In early December, when word first leaked out that Meta was considering new ways to challenge Twitter, I messaged Adam Mosseri.
We were then two months into Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter, and it was clear that the social network I depended on the most was beginning to break. For my own sake, it felt important that something like Twitter continue to exist — a place to share news, jokes, and other short snippets of writing, in a chatty public place that gave me a sense of the daily conversation.
And so I told Mosseri that I hoped Meta would go through with it.
On one hand, the history of Facebook and…
