It was not so long ago that Mark Zuckerberg was under fire over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and was questioned in Congress about the siphoning off of data.

But now it is Elon Musk, him of Tesla and SpaceX fame, who is the villain, with many people expressing happiness that Threads appears to be shaping as a challenger to Twitter.

Why bother? Threads has no chronological feed - the one thing that makes Twitter so valuable to all of us. This misses so hard. https://t.co/sXsWQSgSfZ

— Nandini Jammi (@nandoodles) July 6, 2023

These are early days and while Musk has not exactly endeared himself to people by inviting back right-wing elements that were banned from Twitter and touting his commitment to free speech, he has done plenty to affect the site's performance.

Twitter has lost a good number of its staff and things are often in a state of disarray. Musk started limiting views a few days back, and has also made changes to the blue tick verification scheme, making it a paid option.

The Threads crowd, who appear to have stars in their eyes, appear to be unaffected by the fact that one _has_ to have an Instagram account to join Threads. Additionally, nobody can leave Threads without also losing their Instagram account.

The data that will be sucked up by Threads is the same as that sucked up by other social media sites. Google, for example, has just announced that it considers all material published on the Web as fair game for its AI engine.

The content on Threads is similar to that on Twitter, with narcissistic and marketing posts dominating. Musk has threatened to sue Zuckerberg for allegedly copying Twitter. Zuckerberg says he will only think of monetisation once he sees a path to a billion users.

For the moment, it all seems to be going well. But then these things have an awful way of turning around and biting one on the backside.