The White House on Monday launched accounts on Metaā€™s Threads service for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, gaining a sizable following on an app that competes with Elon Muskā€™s X.

Accounts on Threads were also established for the first lady and second gentleman as well as for the White House itself. Bidenā€™s account racked up 2 million followers within an hour of its debut.

The Threads push comes after Musk last week called an antisemitic conspiracy theory ā€œthe actual truthā€ on X to his 163 million listed followers. He also said some ā€œJewish communitiesā€ promote ā€œanti-whiteā€ messaging and views, calling out the Anti-Defamation League and minorities. White House officials repeatedly rebuked Musk for what they called ā€œanti-semitic rhetoricā€ on X over the last week.

Several major advertisers including Apple and Disney subsequently paused their spending on X. Musk defended himself on Sunday, without apologizing or rescinding his statements.

  • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Am I disappointed itā€™s still a shitty social media company? Yes.

    But is this a good thing? Absolutely. Biden moving to threads gives threads more legitimacy as a competitor. When more groups start using something other than Twitter for communication, Twitter can finally die.

    • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, Meta sucks, but it doesnā€™t suck at the Elon Musk level. Lesser evil and all.