Joe Biden’s birthday gift to himself is a Threads account

First message from Biden on Meta’s competitor X (formerly Twitter), recalls his 2020 presidential victory speech with references to the country’s divisions and its current “inflection point.” Harris gestured to her travels across the United States and meeting with “over 100” world leaders, and Emhoff wrote on gender equity and the “fight against hatred of all kinds”.

The listing of Biden and the company is a good sign for the platform. Before its name change, Twitter had far fewer regular users than larger platforms like Facebook. But it tends to attract influential people of all stripes, including political leaders. Biden’s joining doesn’t mean Threads will become a 1:1 replacement for the old Twitter, but it may indicate it has potential as a news source – whether I want this or not.

According to a declaration provided to Axios, the Biden administration’s new accounts do not prevent their participation in Elon Musk’s platform. Despite this, X’s difficulties in retaining its advertisers have worsened over the past week, as large advertisers, notably Apple and the European Commissionleft abruptly following a Media Questions Report which highlighted hate speech on the platform and Musk’s apparent support for it.