“B“Being on @Threads this week has been a bit like being on a half-empty train early in the morning, slowly filling up with people jumping on and telling horror stories about how bad the service is on the other end of the line,” actor David Harewood posted on Meta’s Twitter/X rival, which, judging by the volume of newcomers asking “Hey, how does it work?”, has seen a resurgence in the UK at least following the far-right riots last week.

Some may wonder what took the Threads newbies so long. To say Elon Musk’s tenure as owner of the social network formerly known as Twitter and now rebranded as X has been ruthless – recent highlights include the unbanning of numerous far-right and extremist accounts and his one-man disinformation campaign about the far-right anti-immigrant unrest in the UK – would be a criminal understatement.

Before Musk came to power in 2022, there were few alternatives to Twitter – but several have emerged in recent years. There are now Bluesky and Mastodon, which are more left-wing or liberal, and Gab and Donald Trump’s Truth Social network on the right.

But the biggest threat to X is probably Threads – not least because it was created by Meta, the giant behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. But the simple question remains: is it good?

For author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera, the reasons for the move are simple: “Well, this place is undermining the social fabric of Britain and I’m using it as little as possible while I wait for it to be regulated,” he explains via X’s direct message. “The systematic abuse has been a problem for me and many people of color for years.”

The reasons for the switch, however, are more likely to be the reasons why people are moving away from X than the appeal of the new, trendy social network Threads. “Threads has some great things, not least its connection to Instagram, which is probably the most useful social media platform around,” says Sanghera. “But not enough of the people I love are on there… I hope that changes. Or maybe I’m just getting closer to the time to give up social media altogether.”

The integration with Instagram – which allows Insta users to open a Threads account in just a few clicks – appears to be the real growth driver of Threads, which reached the 200 million active user milestone earlier this month, just a year after its launch. In comparison, Bluesky has just 6 million registered accounts and 1.1 million active users, while Mastodon has 15 million registered users but no public data on active users.

“Threads has a huge advantage,” says Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University in New York. “Its built-in user base of celebrities and athletes – if you really want to get everyone off Twitter, you’ll have to grab Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan and (Italian sportswriter) Fabrizio Romano.”

Since all of these users are already on Instagram, Bell believes it might be easier to get them on Threads than to convince them to start from scratch on an entirely new social network.

However, she says that’s a shame, as she thinks Threads is a terrible product. “To me, it still feels like a platform that was built to compete with Twitter by a company that hates everything about Twitter,” she says. “Threads is just deadly boring: in presentation, in participation, in everything.”

My personal experience trying out Threads for this article doesn’t suggest that Meta sees Threads as a huge, exciting new product that it wants to attract new users to. An X following of around 88,000 has always put me off joining other social networks, so I’ve never had an Instagram account.

To join Threads, I first had to sign up to Instagram – which took about 24-36 hours thanks to incomprehensible error messages during registration. When I was finally able to create a Threads account, it was restricted as soon as I followed five accounts. When it was free again hours later, I was allowed to follow three more before it was restricted again. I soon gave up.

Those who found it easier to join the site say that once you’re there, it’s more pleasant than X – but mainly for the simple reason that it still has staff to moderate and doesn’t actively try to attract the far right.

“Threads has a different vibe because it is mostly a smaller, self-selected subgroup of people,” says disinformation researcher Nina Jankowicz. “They usually tried it because they want something different than Twitter/X. It also definitely helps that they actively moderate and that the site’s management doesn’t actively promote conspiracy theories.”

All of X’s potential competitors want to differentiate themselves from the original: Meta says that threads aren’t meant to focus on news and current events in the same way that X does. Mastodon is perhaps the most consciously “woke” alternative, with very different norms for content warnings and sharing – making Bluesky the closest thing to the “boundary-pushing”, playful “old Twitter” that many still miss.

Even some who have had early success on Threads are a little sceptical about its real value. Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, has built a following of over 20,000 people on Threads (she has 166,300 on X), but she has a confession to make: she has never posted there.

“I just cross-post on Instagram,” she says somewhat guiltily. “So I did FA to enable that (following) and don’t participate there at all.”

That’s not to say Creasy has retired from social media, though. She still posts on X and is now part of local WhatsApp groups with up to 700 members, meaning her constituents can interact with her very directly. Although she says she doesn’t “get” TikTok – “I can’t bring myself to dance in public” – she started an account there because “the local Asian mums told me they were there”.

Creasy points out that this proliferation on social media has made her job as an MP even more difficult during the recent unrest, because it is harder to connect with audiences and provide accurate information on six platforms than on one.

Threads’ success seems to come down to its simple default: If you use Instagram, it’s the easiest place to join, and once you’re there, it’s… fine. But if it seems like the other users are operating on autopilot, maybe that’s because they are, too.

“There’s a certain overload here – you’re just on the medium and you don’t know what to do with it,” says Creasy. “Ironically, that’s the reason I don’t do threads. It’s not lost on me that I’m gaining ground there – where I’m not doing anything.”