Turning Point USA

Earlier this month Meta, the parent company of Facebook, rolled out its latest social media platform Threads. The app was designed to be a direct competitor to Elon Musk’s Twitter and users who sign up create an account that is tied to their profile on Instagram. The app quickly reached over 100 million users. But since then, the popularity of the app has quickly died down.

Users on Threads immediately started to share concerns regarding privacy and data collection when it comes to Meta. According to the app’s privacy policy, Threads will collect a user’s location, IP information, photos, and other metadata. This has concerned many users due to Meta’s long history of being dishonest over data collection.

Calli Schroeder, senior counsel and global privacy counsel at the digital privacy nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), said in an article published by the Guardian that the privacy concerns around Threads are part of a larger concern in Meta’s history of suspicious actions towards user data.

“Several of the privacy concerns with Threads tie back to Meta’s history of concerning privacy practices,” Schroeder said. “I haven’t seen any evidence that Meta is being transparent about what it will do with sensitive personal data or is clearly establishing why it is collecting that data other than ‘because we want to’.”

Meta’s data collection is something that regulatory agencies around the world are starting to address. Last week, an Australian court ordered Meta to pay a $14 million fine for collecting user data without disclosing this to users. When Threads was launched in the United States, Meta decided to put a hold on the launch of the new social media platform in Europe over concerns that the app may violate privacy regulations.

But consumers aren’t just concerned over Meta’s privacy violations, they are also disappointed by the company’s willingness to censor free speech.

It’s no secret that Meta and Mark Zuckerberg have a significant bias against right-wing ideals. But the level of censorship that was immediately implemented on Threads was shocking. Conservative users quickly noticed that when they opted to follow certain right-wing influencers on Threads, the app would give them a warning first and would require them to confirm the decision to follow the account.

But this concern over censorship on Threads is part of broader allegations being thrown at Meta. According to a recent Twitter Thread by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, the Judiciary Committee is in possession of internal documents proving that Meta has been censoring political posts on Instagram and Facebook on behalf of the Biden administration.

“Never-before-released internal documents subpoenaed by the Judiciary Committee PROVE that Facebook and Instagram censored posts and changed their content moderation policies because of unconstitutional pressure from the Biden White House.”

During the first half of 2021, social media companies like Facebook faced tremendous pressure from the Biden White House—both publicly and privately—to crack down on alleged ‘misinformation.‘”

Representative Jim Jordan via Twitter