[amadeuswoo]

It's worth noting Threads requires an Instagram account to sign up. That's like a 2B+ user funnel with constant in-app cross-promotion.

Not diminishing the growth, but "daily active users" hitting parity with X is a different achievement when you have that kind of distribution baked in Meta

[frizlab]

I don’t know in the rest of the world, but in France it does not. It is possible to signup using a phone number. I did not signup because email is not supported.

[progval]

The EU considers Instagram a "Core Platform Service" (https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...), which comes with a bunch of restrictions. Article 5 paragraph 2 of the DMA comes awfully close to what amadeuswoo is describing:

> 2. The gatekeeper shall not do any of the following: [...]

> (c) cross-use personal data from the relevant core platform service in other services provided separately by the gatekeeper, including other core platform services, and vice versa; and

> (d) sign in end users to other services of the gatekeeper in order to combine personal data,

so Meta may have decided it's not worth fighting it and removed the requirement for Instagram accounts for people connecting from the EU.

[lurk2]

Around a third of the people I used to follow on Instagram had it installed. None of them actively posted there, and I suspect if any of them engaged with it, they were engaging with it after seeing content from Threads that had been cross-promoted to Instagram.