Instagram Threads, the Twitter alternative launched by Mark Zuckerberg, has been facing challenges due to increasing reports of spam attacks and cryptocurrency bots. In response, the app has implemented rate limiting to address the issue. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the measure on July 17 , acknowledging that it may result in some unintentional throttling of active users, or false positives, due to the stricter restrictions.
Users have been expressing their frustrations with the spam attacks, with one person claiming to spend half their time on the app blocking bots promoting gambling and crypto sites. Even Twitter CEO Elon Musk joined in on the conversation, sarcastically commenting "lmaooo copy🐈" in response to the announcement on Twitter.
Twitter itself has also imposed rate limits for a different reason, targeting data scraping by external organizations. Verified Twitter users are currently limited to 15,000 posts per day, while unverified and new unverified accounts have even stricter ca p.s.
Despite a record-breaking number of new users, reaching 100 million in just five days since its launch on July 5, Threads is facing challenges in retaining users. Daily active users dropped by 40% just one week after the app went live, and the average daily usage time per user decreased significantly.
One of the reasons for the decline in engagement could be the direct import of users from Instagram, as this approach might not suit a Twitter-style app like Threads. By linking user accounts directly to real-world identities on Instagram, the app lost the anonymous and fan page interactions that are common on Twitter. Olivia Moore, a partner at a cryptocurrency venture capital firm, a16z, pointed out that Twitter has built a unique social and interest graph over the years that is difficult to replicate, even for similar products like Threads.
