Meta P92 is the codename of an app that the parent company of Facebook and Instagram wants to compete with Twitter. And from what is known so far, it will use the same Mastodon protocol.

Twitter is still the most influential social network on the planet, but it does not seem that its purchase by Elon Musk slow down, your usage drops. Plus, he can speed it up because in the time it’s taken, he’s wreaked havoc with the verification system, laid off half the workforce, and failed to respond to critical issues of hate messages, hoaxes, and misinformation.

Big tech and small startups are looking for an opportunity to capitalize on the growing number of Twitter users looking to migrate to alternative platforms. The most interesting so far has been Mastodon, a platform for open source and free access, which is basically a Twitter clone from the user’s perspective, but it works very differently because it works on a decentralized network.

Target P92

Last December, Instagram (owned by Meta) introduced a new feature called Notes, which allowed users to share short posts of up to 60 characters using only text and emoticons. According to The New York Times, Zuckerberg’s firm would consider turning the feature into a Twitter competitor.

Within hours of this information hitting the internet, Meta confirmed the development in a statement: «we are investigating an independent decentralized social network for sharing text updates. We believe there is an opportunity to create a separate space where creators and public figures can share up-to-date information about their interests.”.

The Meta P92’s specific development status and release date are unknown. It is known that it will be branded by Instagram and will allow users to register/login to the app through their Instagram credentials and their profile would be populated with their current account details, name, username, bio, photo profile, followers, etc. The app would be offered under a supplemental privacy policy and specific terms of service that mention data sharing between the apps Meta uses with WhatsApp and all its services.

The Meta P92 would work on a decentralized network with ‘ActivityPub’ protocol which is the same thing Mastodon uses and with it It will allow users to broadcast posts to people on other servers, with plans to add the ability to follow them and view content from different servers. Some of the known features include clickable links to post previews (like Twitter), user bio, username, verification badges, images and videos. It would also allow for followers and likes, but it’s unclear if the commenting and messaging features would be present in the first version.

If Mastodon has already managed to take a big bite out of Twitter, this Meta P92 could go even further by leveraging the hundreds of millions of Instagram users and everything that parent company Facebook has.