Meta’s Threads app expands to ‘countries across’ Europe

Threads — Meta’s rival to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter — launched in “countries across” Europe on Thursday.

“Today we’re opening Threads to more countries in Europe,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said. “Welcome everyone.”

European Union (EU) officials said in July the launch of the platform in Europe would be delayed because of privacy concerns. 

“Today, we’re beginning to expand Threads to countries across Europe. We’re thrilled to give more people the chance to follow and join the conversations they care about,” Threads said in a post on Instagram, its sister platform under Meta.

“Since we launched this summer, we’ve been working quickly to add the tools and features people want,” the post continued. “Now, you can use Threads on both mobile and web. You can also edit a post, search for keywords, add a tag to a post and have fun with GIFs, polls and voice threads. Much more to come.”

Threads’ rival platform, X, has been mired in controversy and lost advertisers in recent weeks.

X owner and CEO Elon Musk faced backlash last month for appearing to agree with an antisemitic post on the platform, replying it was the “actual truth.” The post that Musk replied to was a response to another post by a user raising an issue with increasing antisemitism.

Companies such as IBM, Disney and Apple announced they would pull ads from X in the wake of Musk’s comments. The platform had already been struggling with ad revenue following half of X’s top advertisers’ exits in 2022 after Musk took control. At the end of last month, The New York Times reported that the platform could lose $75 million in advertising revenue by the end of the year.