Meta to introduce Ads on Threads in 2025 in move surprising no one.

I’m more surprised to discover now that it launched without ads

So did Facebook. It's the old drug dealer gambit: first hit is on the house, after that, you gotta pay.
The goal was to attract Twitter refugees. No ads helps sell the "greener pastures" the users were looking for.

Once those users are comfortable, Threads can do whatever it wants. They know how much it took to get Twitter users to leave Twitter.

People acting like Meta launched Threads out of the kindness of Zuck's heart are dumb as fuck. Threads has the same goal as Facebook: to make money selling your eyeballs to advertisers and your metadata to data brokers.
- Yet, some people seem to be harsher towards BlueSky than Threads. It's just pure hate being focused for so many migrating there instead of Fediverse (which I agree would be better, but these people are not joining a social media to have to learn new tech terms so they can create an account and having to decide which instance after understanding federalization if they even do).
  
  These people are happy when people migrate to Threads though, because better Zuckerberg than Musk, right? For some people it is always about hate and they avoid/are unable to make constructive criticism.

I'm just waiting for Bluesky to introduce ads.

Maybe in the future, but for now it looks like they already amnounced their next step to how they'll monetize their platform.

Bluesky has revealed how it plans to start making money without necessarily having to rely on ads. The platform will remain free to use for everyone, though it’s working on a premium subscription that will provide access to profile customization tools (remember when Myspace offered that for free?) and higher quality video uploads.

Source: https://www.engadget.com/social-media/blueskys-upcoming-premium-plan-wont-give-paid-users-special-treatment-193800247.html
- remember when Myspace offered that for free?
  
  This seems like a strange gripe. If their business model was sustainable, more of us would be reading this on myspace right now.
- A subscription for a social media site. The 21th century is ridiculous. And the fact that Twitter (under Elon the scumbag Musk) introduced it first, and they're presenting themselves as a Twitter alternative, makes it much worse. No thanks, I'm definitely staying on the fediverse.

TIL Threads didn't have ads

"Since our priority is to build consumer value first and foremost, there are no ads or monetization features currently on Threads," a Meta spokesperson said in an emailed response.

The spokesperson then continued, "But only until early 2025. Then we'll be throwing consumer value in the trash and lighting it on fire. It will be very exciting."

They’re not even hiding the enshittification strategy. They’re practically teaching you the principles up front.

“First we trap you, then we exploit you. Duh.”
- Is it enshittification if it's shit from the start?
- Well, this was the Facebook origin story, so anyone on Threads deserves it.
Consumer value as in number of valuable consumers we can grift later
- You deserve a raise. Someone get this deadwalker a corner office!
Step 2 of the enshittification.

Dear Pikachu, of course you are surprised. Learn how to expect and evade Team Rocket first.
- How could those two suspiciously familiar faces with light violet and wine colored hairs possibly be Jessie and James from Team Rocket???

There aren't any ads on Mastodon. :)

i don't even threads yall, but I still am not surprised

More short sighted corporate greed. It's a great period to try and pull in Twitter users but instead let's add ads for a short term bump in profits.

Why is it shortsighted? A service like this costs money to run, and if you won't pay for it, someone else has to.
- Maybe lets not try to pretend that it is just about the costs shall we? I bet MBAs will cower at the suggestion to put up a paywall from the beginning. Afterall, bait-and-switch is their bread-and-butter.
  
  Subscriptions weren't the norm when we actually paid for something and got the full product. The cost to run things didn't suddenly become a factor just now.
  
  Only thing that changed: greed of businesses, execs, shareholders.
They'd have to implement ads eventually anyway. Companies do have budgets, and the money to run Threads has to come from somewhere.
- Companies can and do make a loss to gain market share, they ae currently doing it with the metaverse and AI.
  
  As twitter struggles under the spastic, they should be incentivising the move for users.

Still no reason to defederate, huh?

Still no reason to defederate, huh?

No, it's not. Ads can't federate. Threads has no control over my Mastodon feed and Lemmy can't interact with Threads at all. Following Threads accounts from Mastodon is effectively an ad blocker.
- Might be a stupid question, but can't threads just post ads as "posts" via activityPub? On mastodon they would appear as toots?
  
  Was just remembering how reddit introduced ads as basically promoted posts and recall facebook doing the same.
  
  I sure fucking hope not.
- Ads can't federate
  
  Never underestimate facebooks capacity to enshittify. If they want to send ads as posts they will make a way. In principle the fediverse should oppose for-profit-line-go-up fuckheads, it's always the same bullshit.
- How do you know that Threads won't inject ads as posts?
I'm changing my vote in the Agora from "yes defederate" to "Hell fucking yes defederate.'

I wish more federated services had built in (optional) support for enabling ads so I didn't have to constantly worry about them shutting down. Especially peer tube.

I kinda wish more federated services also had built in, optional support for directly paying the people hosting the service and infrastructure.

The only surprising thing is that it took this long.

I haven't used threads, I just assumed it already had ads
- Same
There must be an enshitification chart where time is on one axis and DAU is on another, where it's considered the perfect time to enshitifiy due to peak username or some shit
- Imagine that someone has that job. They make and present that chart in meetings. That person exists and is why we can’t have nice things.
Pretty much the exact same thought I had upon seeing the title.
- Gotta build that userbase before you raoe them

Fuck Mark Zuckerberg. Fuck Jack Dorsey. Fuck Daniel Ek. Fuck Elon Musk. Fuck Peter Thiel. Fuck Jeff Bezos. Fuck Steven Huffman.

& all the rest.

yeah that is why i chose not to donate to the instance is that my home any longer.

when they decided to keep federated with threads they decided that they didn't need my donations.

You know that blocking threads account-wide on Mastodon 2 clicks and a confirmation?

It surprise me a lot! I thought it had adds already...

Did threads take off recently or what's the story? I thought it was unsuccessful as xitter was already the preferred platform

Meta auto created threads accounts for all instagram users iirc so they kinda forced thwir way into the market by pre inflating their numbers.
I thought it was unsuccessful as xitter was already the preferred platform

It isn't anymore, ad I expect that to accelerate. The Guardian just announced today that they will no longer use it, for example (although individual journalists may still choose to do so)
I was wondering that too. All I hear about is BlueSky and then suddenly this.
I see official POTUS content on Mastodon because of Threads. I'd say that's pretty taken off

How about ads on the hood of my car got when I'm doing oil changes? 😔😭

Or maybe 🤔, and I hope I don't offend my fellow human beings in Ukraine, but what if meta donated drones to Ukraine where they would blowup tanks and the explosion would be in the form of a dawn commercial? Or Downy! Or Mr. Clean... somebody has to Remove all the stains 😔.