Meta’s Threads Making Political Impact

It didn’t take long for Meta’s new Twitter-like social media platform to make a political impact.

More than 100 House Democrats and about three dozen House Republicans, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., joined the new platform, which debuted Thursday.

By Thursday night, more than a quarter of 535 House members and senators had created Threads accounts.

“I’m just like, ‘Oh another network, better get my boss on it,'” one Republican congressional aide told Axios. “I think this will be the first real [T]witter competitor[.]”

Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., created Threads accounts, as did Republican presidential candidates Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, and former Vice President Mike Pence.

“Check… check ….1,2,1,2 …is this thing on?” Rubio wrote with his first Thread.

Former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the top two contenders for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, had not created Threads accounts as of Friday morning. Nor had President Joe Biden.

The White House hasn’t announced whether it will join Threads, though top aides such as domestic policy director Neera Tanden and deputy press secretary Andrew Bates created accounts, Axios reported.

Many people unhappy with Twitter under CEO Elon Musk have been eager for alternative messaging apps other than Trump’s Truth Social, GETTR, Mastodon, and Post News.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said he hoped Threads would be the last new social media site he needed to sign up for: “PLEASE don’t make me join any more new platforms…. I’ll do anything,” Politico reported.

Democrat Govs. Gretchen Whitmer, D-Mich., and Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., joined Threads.

Some conservatives, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Donald Trump Jr., have accused Threads of bias against those on the right.

That didn’t stop Trump Jr. from creating a Threads account.

“I figured I’d give this a shot seeing as quite a few people on Twitter are trying to blame me for the cocaine in the White House? !?” Don Jr. began his first Thread.

Threads became the most rapidly downloaded app of all time with more than 30 million times during its first 16 hours, Axios reported.

“In such an impossibly fractured media landscape, whatever tools we can use to reach people we will try,” a House communications director told Axios.

Twitter has threatened to sue Meta Platforms over Threads platform, Semafor reported Thursday, accusing CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s company of hiring former Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.”