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Meta-owned app Threads has seen a surge in activity in Taiwan, while it faces a dwindling user base in the US. Its newfound popularity is suggested to be due to a presidential election.
While Threads boasted impressive results following its launch on July 6, 2023, with over 10 million people registering in just seven hours, it has since seen a substantial decline.
Users are now spending a mere average of three minutes a day on the app in contrast to rival X which sees an average of 31 minutes per day on the platform.
Threads have had a second wind in one East Asian country though, with the 2024 Taiwanese presidential election said to have given it another shot.
Threads and Taiwan politics
Austin Wang who studies social media in Taiwan has traced the platform’s rise to November of last year. Speaking to MIT Technology Review, he said: “Many (worried) pan-green supporters noticed that their complaints on politics were promoted to more readers on Threads than any other social media platforms (especially Facebook and Instagram)…
“So more and more pan-green supporters gathered to Threads and used it as a mobilization tool.”
Although the election concluded in mid-January, other political figures are said to have reactivated their Threads accounts to join the conversation.
This has resulted in Threads being the most downloaded social network app in both Apple and Android app stores in Taiwan on almost every day of the past three months.
Wang goes on to say that there are two major demographics among Taiwan’s Threads users today – the pro-green votes and younger students in middle school and high school: “In recent weeks, there is a considerable amount of discussion on how to choose colleges, majors, and even high schools.”
Meta has long come under fire when it comes to political topics. Just two months ago, in February, it announced the development of an opt-out setting to limit political content visibility.
This has been added to the ‘Content Preferences’ section under account settings on Instagram and will follow through to Threads as well.
This will give users the chance to reduce political content from people they don’t follow if they choose to.
