threads against twitter
The new hyped competition is “too intolerant”: why Elon Musk is now being praised by the Taliban
Elon Musk’s Twitter is praised by the Taliban for its freedom
© Joel Saget / AFP
With his new app Threads, Mark Zuckerberg is making direct competition for his nemesis Elon Musk. But not everyone wants to change. However, Twitter is unlikely to be too pleased about its new advocates.
Even before Mark Zuckerberg steps into the ring with Elon Musk to make their announced cage fight a reality (Find out more here), Zuckerberg poured oil on the fire again last week. With Threads, his company Meta not only brought out a direct competitor to Twitter, but also the fastest growing app of all time. But Musk can obviously rely on one user group: At least the Taliban want to remain loyal to Twitter.
This was announced by the Islamist rulers of Afghanistan on Twitter. While the world is still smoldering in the Threads hype, Taliban leader Anas Haqqani announced that he simply sees no alternative to the original. Above all, he sees two important advantages with Twitter. “The first privilege is freedom of speech. The second is the publicity and credibility of Twitter,” he attests. “Twitter doesn’t have intolerant rules like meta. Other platforms can’t replace it.”
Taliban call Meta ‘intolerant’
Haqqani is blowing exactly the same horn as Musk. Ever since he acquired the short messaging service, the Tesla billionaire has been obsessed with stopping alleged oppression of free speech on Twitter. He fired moderators and curtailed efforts to flag false reports. And brought back a lot of users who had been blocked because of sometimes harsh attacks on other people or minorities.
The fact that Zuckerberg’s network now wants to do it the other way around is of course a treat for the self-declared “freedom of speech absolutist” Musk. Threads is a “mentally healthy” alternative to Twitter, according to leaked documents from parent company Meta. Instagram boss Adam Mosseri, who is responsible for threads, has already emphasized several times that divisive topics such as news or politics would preferably not be on the platform at all. Accordingly, Musk’s attacks against the competitor – in addition to threats of legal action – focused primarily on the fact that Threads should censor its users.
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No place for Taliban
In fact, Threads follows the same rules as its sibling app Instagram, such as in terms of insults or inappropriate content. One rule specifically affects the extremist Taliban: “Instagram is not a place to support or praise terrorism, organized crime or hate groups,” the rules say. You don’t have to try out whether the Taliban are included: since the end of 2021, the group’s content and its support have been explicitly banned on Facebook and Co.
Previously, the group had also been very active in using meta-services. Shortly after taking power in the summer of 2021, the Taliban set up a kind of complaints hotline via the Whatsapp meta service, which the population could use to complain about the fighters’ abusive behavior (find out more here). However, because the United States classifies the Taliban as a terrorist organization, Meta quickly put a stop to it and blocked numerous groups and numbers.
What does Musk say?
However, Haqqani’s praise did not resonate with Twitter users. “Aren’t you… the Taliban?” asks an irritated user. “It’s quite ironic that Taliban Interior Minister Haqqani is praising Twitter’s freedom of speech,” criticized another. “Under his leadership, hundreds of courageous journalists have been brutally executed over the past 20 years. Simply because they stood up for a free press.”
However, one person has not yet spoken up: although he is otherwise so busy and has been tagged several times under the post, Elon Musk has not commented directly on it. Instead, he preferred to post about the new film “Oppenheimer” and the problem of not having enough time for video games as a father. But one of his most recent posts still fits. “Everyone can be themselves here,” Musk praises his Twitter. The Taliban see it that way too.