‘Instagram’s Twitter alternative Threads will not yet come to the European Union’

Instagram Threads will not come to the European Union ‘yet’. The Irish privacy regulator says it has heard this from Meta. Meta will probably release the service on July 6, which as far as we know will only be available in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The Irish supervisory authority Data Protection Commission says to the Irish medium Independent not directly block the arrival of Threads. The DPC reports that it has been in contact with Meta about the new service; In those conversations, Meta indicated that it would not release Threads in the European Union ‘for the time being’. DPC does not give a reason, for example it is not clear whether this has to do with legislation such as the GDPR that would block the arrival of the app.

The Threads app recently appeared in app stores where a release date of July 6 was mentioned. Threads appears to be a Twitter-like platform in which users can share short text messages with followers. Users can link their Threads account to an Instagram account. The platform may use the ActivityPub protocol, just like Mastodon, which would allow Threads to integrate with other ActivityPub platforms.