Threads threat Zuckerberg's plan for the unravelling of Twitter

If Threads truly is going to upstage Twitter, then it claims it is going to do it with "kindness". Mark Zuckerberg, whose company Meta launched the social media platform last week, said positivity would be a big difference in a product that looks remarkably similar to its rival.

- Dan Milmo

"We are definitely focusing on kindness and making this a friendly place," he wrote on Threads.

However, one amicable exchange between the Meta chief and a mixed martial arts professional last Thursday reminded users that Zuckerberg recently accepted Elon Musk's offer of a cage fight.

The focus on positivity, from a company well used to content controversies of its own, is a telling indication of how the tech industry views Twitter's performance under Musk's ownership.

When Musk took over Twitter in a $44bn deal last October, the self-described "free speech absolutist" destabilised the company's public image with job cuts and viewing limits; and by antagonising its liberal user base by reinstating the accounts of controversial figures such as the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, while banning journalists before rowing back and reinstating them.

Rebecca McGrath, a technology analyst for the market research firm Mintel, says app users are generally reluctant to change their platform choices entirely, but adds that Twitter has become so controversial "it has opened up a gap in the market that did not exist".