If you miss having access to Whoopi Goldberg’s inner monologue at your fingertips, then maybe Threads is for you.
But the Howie Carr Radio Network will not be joining Threads.
Those who have listened to Howie’s show for longer than five minutes could likely conclude that on their own. But Zuckerberg’s new app is even worse than it looks, and after Howie’s run-ins with Orwellian Big Tech, declining the offer from Zuck was not a tough call.
You may be wondering, What is Threads?
Meta’s new app wants to serve as both a replica and the antithesis of Twitter in a post-Musk era. As the human attention span diminishes, the average person has no interest in reading your 500-word Facebook birthday shoutout.
Instead, Internet users are gravitating toward short blurbs, quick videos, and punchy headlines. For years, a Tweet’s 140-character limit dominated this space. Users were granted more options for written and visual content by Elon Musk and, now, by his foil Mark Zuckerberg.
But “Threading” will never become a gerund the same way “Tweeting” so quickly became the newest “Xeroxing.”
“Thread this out?” Come on.
Where Twitter Anno Musk aims to offer a virtual public square, Threads offers a utopia. You can block all comments containing words of your choice. If you never want to see the letters T-R-U-M-P next to each other, just say so!
The algorithm is coded to be “positive” and “productive.” In other words, when you sign up for Threads, you sign up for a liberal elitist echo chamber.
Speaking of aristocrats, Meta has allowed those still mourning the loss of the coveted blue checkmark—one of Musk’s successful attempts to democratize the space—to effortlessly connect current Instagram profiles to corresponding Threads profiles. If you were blue on Insta, you’re automatically blue on Threads.
There is always a cost to the convenience offered by Meta. Zuckerberg and his Meta minions can now correlate your images—say, your sweet new ride (and the license plate you didn’t blur out)—to content you like—for example, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s most recent expletive-filled video.
The surface-level takeaway is that Meta will use this data to try to sell you things. Perhaps they’ll decide enough MTG fans like Harleys to push more motorcycle content on those pages. And that’s creepy enough.
But Threads will also serve as Mark Zuckerberg’s latest scheme to harvest personal data, captivate the user beyond his or her own control, and influence the electorate through sophisticated modern methods.
If you can control what you see, Zuckerberg’s Democrat operatives surely can, too. And if they can label you as ultra-MAGA for marketing purposes, they can label you as such for other, more insidious purposes. Take Twitter (Before Musk), which has been proven to have coordinated with the FBI to place freedom-fighting users (like Howie Carr) on “lists.”
Working in right-wing media often requires conceding both personal information and the fruits of the company’s labor to Big Tech overlords who prefer traditional, conservative, and patriotic rhetoric to be algorithmically stifled.
Conservative accounts might be “shadow-banned,” meaning that a user will be stuck just past his target audience’s reach. Coders can also implement obstacles to following and sharing unseemly posts. Threads has already done so.
In the early days of Threads, a user was met with a warning when he tried following Donald Trump, Jr.’s account.
“Are you sure you want to follow @donaldtrumpjr?” it read. “This account has repeatedly posted false information that was reviewed by independent fact-checkers or went against our community guidelines.”
An uproar from the right prompted Zuckerberg’s underlings to eventually remove the flag.
The Howie Carr Radio Network, too, has had run-ins with egregious censorship from Google’s YouTube. Back before COVID skepticism was given the okay by state-run media like The New York Times, Howie brought Dr. Brian Joondeph on the show to discuss the poorly assessed coronavirus fatality rates.
The YouTube video was flagged as “misinformation,” the final nail in the coffin for the HCRN. The company switched video broadcasts to Rumble, which seeks to create technologies “immune to cancel culture” and promote a “free and open Internet.”
In an increasingly virtual world, social media should simulate the public square, a place where you might not like everything you hear. That is the only way a free civilization survives, let alone advances. A company that stifles an undesirable alternative lens is one complicit in the take-down of free speech. So, no, Howie Carr will not be joining Zuck’s new dystopian Threads. You can find him on Truth Social and Twitter, two apps much better poised to align with the First Amendment.