Meta’s Twitter clone expected Thursday as Elon Musk drives users away with tech issues and new limits

The owner of Facebook and Instagram will launch “Threads,” a text-based social media platform that will compete with Twitter, on Thursday, according to a new listing on Apple’s app store posted on Monday afternoon. The app also briefly appeared on Google’s app store for Android smartphones over the weekend, according to The Verge. (The listing was quickly removed)

Threads will be built on Instagram, according to photo previews in the app store listing. Users can post through a Twitter-like user interface, and follow others through their Instagram handles.

Meta has reportedly considered working on a new text-based social media network since late last year. But the social media company is launching the new service after a weekend of technical issues and temporary changes on its competitor Twitter that’s already driving users to competing social media platforms. 

Bluesky, the Twitter-like social media platform launched by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, said that users might experience “some degraded performance as a result of record-high traffic,” and even temporarily paused sign-ups to handle the inflow.

And the changes at Twitter keep coming. On Monday, Twitter announced in a post that users would soon need to be verified in order to access Tweetdeck, a customizable dashboard popular with power users and businesses. (The most straightforward way to be verified is to sign up for Twitter Blue, the platform’s subscription service)

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Twitter stumbles

Over the weekend, users were puzzled by technical issues and error messages that were ultimately revealed to be the result of deliberate changes to the platform.

On Friday, Twitter quietly barred people from seeing posts if they were not logged into a Twitter account. Previously, anyone, even those without a Twitter account, could access the site. 

Musk confirmed that the change was intentional, claiming on Friday the measure was temporary in order to counter “extreme levels of data scraping.” 

“We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!” Musk wrote on the platform earlier that afternoon. 

Then on Saturday afternoon, Musk said that he was imposing temporary limits on how many posts users could view per day, again to counter “extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation.” Even Twitter’s paying subscribers were subject to viewing limits, albeit ones more generous than free users. 

Musk, who says he is still involved in “product development” even after handing over the CEO position to former NBC executive Linda Yaccarino, griped over the weekend that A.I. developers were using Twitter’s content to train large language models. 

“It is rather galling to have to bring large numbers of servers online on an emergency basis just to facilitate some A.I. startup’s outrageous valuation,” Musk tweeted Friday. 

Twitter did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment. 

‘Sanely-run’

Musk, after taking over the company last October, has introduced a number of major changes to the social media platform. The company changed its moderation policies, allowing once-banned users back on the platform. It also launched a paid verification service, which stumbled as some users impersonated brands and public figures, and celebrities publicly stated they would never pay for verification.

The disruption has knocked Twitter’s advertising revenue, which was down 59% year-on-year as of early June. 

That left an opening that Meta hoped to fill. “Twitter is in crisis and Meta needs its mojo back,” suggested one employee in an internal post, reported the New York Times in December.

“We’ve been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run, that they believe that they can trust and rely upon for distribution,” said Meta’s chief product officer Chris Cox at an internal meeting in early June, reported The Verge at the time.

That quote pushed Musk to challenge Zuckerberg to a “cage match”, an offer the Meta CEO has accepted. There has, as of now, been no details as to when the fight might happen.