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Meta is shutting down Threads in Turkey on April 29 after an interim injunction from the Turkish Competition Authority (TCA) against automatic data-sharing with Instagram. The TCA ruled that linking Threads and Instagram without user opt-in "will lead to irreparable harms" and that Meta "abused its dominant position" in the industry with the practice. The TCA also suggested that the linking exists primarily to increase the company's "market power."
Rather than make any changes to how Instagram and Threads integrate in the region, Meta's pulling the nascent social media app. The company says this is merely a temporary measure as it works to appeal the injunction, but there's no timetable for that. In the meantime, Meta suggests that users in Turkey either deactivate their accounts or delete them entirely. Those who deactivate will have their posts and interactions restored "if Threads returns" to the country.
Turkish regulators aren't the only people who think the automatic linking between Threads and Instagram is, at best, a bit creepy. It's been a point of contention since the platform launched last year. The apps were so tied together that users couldn't even delete a Threads account without nuking their Instagram account, though Meta patched this several months back.
Meta also began promoting Threads posts on Facebook and Instagram
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On Friday, people around the web noticed a new addition to their Instagram: Meta AI, the company's general-purpose, AI-powered chatbot that can answer questions, write poetry and generate images with a simple text prompt. The move isn't surprising. Meta revealed Meta AI in September 2023 and has spent the last few months adding the chatbot to products like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, so adding it to Instagram seems like a no-brainer.
— Krish Murjani ? (@appleforever18) April 11, 2024
"Our generative AI-powered experiences are under development in various phases, and we're testing a range of them publicly in a limited capacity," a Meta spokesperson told Engadget, which suggests that not everyone has the feature available yet. TechCrunch, which
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