The Endless Cycle of Social Media

This week, Meta launched its Twitter competitor: Instagram’s Threads. I chatted with my colleague Charlie Warzel, who covers technology, about why Threads is appealing to users, and what it would take for the platform to succeed.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

• “Step aside, Joe Biden.”
• The sin the House Freedom Caucus couldn’t forgive
• What did people do before smartphones?
• The most baffling argument a Supreme Court justice has ever made

Header: A Hunger for Posting

Two days ago, Mark Zuckerberg posted a front-facing on Instagram with some news: Threads, Meta’s Twitter competitor, had launched. With a few taps, users could download the new app, port over some of their Instagram network, and start posting. By this morning, according to Mark Zuckerberg, Threads had 70 million users (in July 2022, Twitter reportedly had about ). My colleague Charlie Warzel wrote a story with Ian Bogost this week for arguing that Threads proves . I