• krigo666@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “Last week, the text-based social media platform reported a record 100 million sign-ups in just five days.”

    LOL The biggest bullshit of the year… Meta just created shadow accounts of all Instagram users, without their knowledge or consent…

    • Shadesto@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      100 million isn’t that much when it comes to Meta. There’s over 2 billion “active” Instagram users that all were prompted to download the app. That means only 0.005% of Instagram accounts fell for it.

      I have no doubt that at least that many people tried it out. When I went to the Android App store, Meta was paying for a front and center promotion of Threads.

        • fcuks@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          while you’re correct based on instagram’s numbers, the other commenter would be correct if it was a British billion which is a million millions. just a fun fact 🦄

          • crate_of_mice@feddit.nu
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            1 year ago

            That’s true, although the long scale billion hasn’t been a thing even in Britain for decades.

            If it’s fun facts you like, try this: English is the clear odd one out, most other languages use milliard for 10^9 and billion for 10^12.

            • fcuks@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              milliard - love it ty for that. Reminds me of: French: L’ananas Italian: L’ananas Icelandic: Ananas Portuguese: O ananás Swedish: Ananas German: Die Ananas

              English: Pineapple
              
        • jarfil@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Well, technically… they said “users”, not “people”. Maybe there are 2E12-1E8 bots… 🙃

    • Master@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Is there a way to check if a user account exists for my instagram account without logging in?

      • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        people reported already having followers before ever using the platform, meaning all people automatically had an account created for them. that (and many other things) is also very legally problematic in the EU which is why the service isnt available here.

        • NinjaAssassinKitty@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It’s not hard to understand what was happening.

          • I follow Person A and Person A follows me on Instagram
          • Person A signs up for Threads before me
          • I sign up for Threads after
          • Because we already follow each other on Instagram, Threads automatically made Person A follow me

          The issue with the EU is you can’t mingle and mix user data from two separate services.

        • kmkz_ninja@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          “An account was already created for them” because it’s the same Meta account. You can just follow people when you start your account without them necessarily activating threads.

        • TerryCustard@feddit.uk
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          1 year ago

          Sole benefit of Brexit identified. We get to hand over our data to meta before you guys. It’s all been worth it.

    • chem_bpy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not to mention all the spam bots they fail to actually ban after multiple people report.

      • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        Bots generate user engagement! Granted, it’s bad engagement, but it also generates jobs for the moderator AI teams