The White House launched Threads accounts for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday. Threads, owned by Meta, has accumulated millions of users in a short period of time after facilitating the transfer of Instagram accounts. As Threads becomes an alternative platform to X (formerly Twitter), the strong influence of the White House will help Threads gain a foothold.
While X remains a primary forum for public speech, it has come under increasing fire for failing to moderate content deemed harmful by the public and private sectors.
And the Biden administration is turning to more social media platforms to communicate its achievements to Americans ahead of the presidential election.
First Lady Jill Biden, second-term President Doug Emhoff, various White House accounts, and La Casa Blanca, the White House's Spanish-language version, will all subsequently have Threads accounts.
White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson said the move had nothing to do with X's operational status: "We continue to use X and have not changed our plans to use X."
But for those who have left the social network in disgust over Elon Musk’s handling of Platform X, they will assume that the White House’s actions reflect their thinking.