Mark Zuckerberg ends 11-year Twitter break with ‘savage’ tweet about Threads

It turns out Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerbergdoes have an account on rival platform Twitter.

More than 10 years after his last tweet calling on Americans to urge their members of Congress to be “pro-internet” and oppose the Stop Online Privacy Act (Sopa) and Protect IP Act (Pipa), he returned to the Elon Musk-owned site to promote new Instagram app Threads.

As Twitter continues to experience outages and implement controversial limits on the number of tweets users can view in a day, disgruntled social media lovers fanatics been looking for an alternative platform to flock to – with Meta launching their alternative Threads on Thursday.

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said in a post (or ‘thread’) on the app: “Here we go. We have lots of work to do, but we’re looking to build an open, civil place for people to have conversations.”

However, it was Zuckerberg’s social media activity after the public launch this week which caught many people’s attention, with a choice of meme delighting Twitter users.

With no caption at all elaborating on it – as if the post needed one – the CEO shared the classic ‘Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man’ meme, which many have interpreted as a nod to the similarities between Instagram’s text-based app and Twitter.

The new social network, which requires an Instagram account to join (and needs you to delete your Instagram profile to delete your Threads account), also has an algorithmically-generated main feed (combining followed accounts and recommended users), as well as the standard options to like, comment, share, quote or ‘repost’ a post.

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It was revealed more than 10 million users had signed up within seven hours of Threads going public, but that hasn’t stopped people from lingering around on Twitter to express their glee at Zuckerberg’s “savage” dig:

And that’s not the only comment likely to irritate Musk, who famously shelled out $44bn to buy Twitter back in October, as former Twitter employees (both those who stepped down before the Tesla founder’s takeover and those who lost their jobs afterwards) have praised the platform too.

Dantley Davis, the ex-design lead who left Twitter in 2021, wrote on Threads: “Digging the interface for Threads. Not surprised, given the talent on the IG team. Well done.

“Twitter turned into C-Span on meth. Fingers crossed that it’s easier to keep politics off my Threads feed.”

Meanwhile Esther Crawford, who previously worked in the product team at the bird app and shared a scathing tweet appearing to mock Musk’s “hubris” during the recent Twitter outage, joked she “can’t feel my face” following her first night on Threads.

She attached a meme of beloved children’s puppet Elmo appearing to snort drugs, with the substance labelled ‘Threads notifications’, in reference to the app’s addictive interface.

As for Musk, he’s been criticising the network over on Twitter, responding to one tweet in which an unnamed Meta executive is quoted as wanting to set up a “sanely run” media site, and shares the app’s list of data it may collect on users (including purchases, location, usage data and “sensitive info”).

“Thank goodness they’re so sanely run,” he replied, sarcastically.

And let’s not forget that both Zuckerberg and Musk have said they are up for a “cage fight” match against each other…

Yes, really.

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