Meta has announced that the social media channel Threads, set to become X’s biggest challenger, will be available in Europe from this month. The American newspaper Wall Street Journal found out. The parent company, which is behind Facebook and WhatsApp, among others, adheres to European rules.

Meta launched Threads in July as an alternative to Elon Musk’s X, the former Twitter. This platform would be too polarizing, so Mark Zuckerberg thought it would be a good idea to develop a platform himself. Threads now has around 100 million monthly users. The platform started strong and immediately attracted millions of users. Nevertheless, the hype died down by the end of the summer.

Folds according to European rules

The fact that Threads was not yet available on the European market has to do with the strict rules. The digital data protection law of the European Union is largely responsible for this. For example, there were concerns about data transfer between Threads and Instagram, another meta social media platform. Previously, only users with an Instagram account could access threads, which does not meet European standards.

Some Europeans have already accessed the platform through a loophole in recent months. By providing threads in the European Union, Meta complies with European rules and is accessible to every European. This makes it possible to read messages in threads without an (Instagram) account. Mark Zuckerberg expects the platform to grow strongly in the coming months and years. According to him, Threads could reach more than a billion users.