• small44@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    If it’s automatic shouldn’t the number of user be the same as the number of Instagram user?

    • VerifiablyMrWonka@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      When you login initially it offers to follow all your Instagram follows. Even if they’ve never logged in. Its creating shadow accounts for all of them.

      When they login initially they find they already have a bunch of followers.

      So it’s not all of Instagram. It’s just all the people who’ve tried it + all the people they tried to follow.

      • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        I’d love a citation for that.

        If it only took a single one of your followers signing up for Threads to make a “shadow account” for you, I’d imagine the number of accounts would basically be the same as the number of Instagram accounts.

        • binaryphile@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          That really doesn’t need to be known, we could tell just from average daily active user counts. If those weren’t provided, that’s a big red flag on the rest of their numbers because there’s no reason not to include those numbers. Active users is the most accurate measure. They might reasonably choose to hype the signups number, but if everyone wants to know actives and it’s not provided, that’s Meta choosing to hide the information. Not a confident move.

        • PabloDiscobar@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          It’s simply a database. Your account is in the database and the threads account is an attribute of it marked as “activated” or “not activated”. After that it’s just a matter of counting the activated accounts.

          • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Sure, but they’re not reporting the number of Instagram accounts. They’re reporting the number of, to borrow your term, ‘activated’ Threads accounts, which only happens when the user makes active and intentional steps to download the Threads app and sign into it.

            I don’t think it’s that wild to call that “signing up for Threads” and reporting it as such.