The White House on Monday launched accounts on Meta’s Threads service for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, gaining a sizable following on an app that competes with Elon Musk’s X.
Accounts on Threads were also established for the first lady and second gentleman as well as for the White House itself. Biden’s account racked up 2 million followers within an hour of its debut.
The Threads push comes after Musk last week called an antisemitic conspiracy theory “the actual truth” on X to his 163 million listed followers. He also said some “Jewish communities” promote “anti-white” messaging and views, calling out the Anti-Defamation League and minorities. White House officials repeatedly rebuked Musk for what they called “anti-semitic rhetoric” on X over the last week.
Several major advertisers including Apple and Disney subsequently paused their spending on X. Musk defended himself on Sunday, without apologizing or rescinding his statements.
I can’t imagine people flooding Mastodon with new signups and traffic just to follow Biden. There would likely be a little bump as it gets reported and more people get curious, but most would likely be more along the lines of “oh that’s nice” and go right back to Twitter/threads.
I sorta think, had this happened in the run-up to 2008, it’s possible that people might have flooded it to follow Obama, but Biden doesn’t have anywhere near the pull with young voters that Obama had. Back then we voted for Obama. Now we vote against Trump, and Biden just happens to be the beneficiary. No one is going to change their online presence just because he moved his soapbox.