Five months after its launch in July, Meta’s social network Threads is now finally available to people living in the European Union.
In a post on Threads, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta is opening up Threads to more countries in Europe. “Today we’re opening Threads to more countries in Europe. Welcome everyone đź‘‹,” he wrote.
The Threads.net website has a “Use without a profile” mode, which doesn’t require users to log in through Instagram. While users can look at posts through that mode, they won’t be able to reply to, like or repost them.
Image Credits: Instagram
If you are using Threads in the EU without any profile, you will see a single algorithmically populated feed. You can also search for accounts, but seemingly not for posts.
At launch in July, the company restricted access to the new social network in the EU to become compliant with various rules of the bloc. Users weren’t able to download the app to access the social network. And, at that time, Threads didn’t even have a web version to access posts through URLs.
In July, days after Threads’ launch, Meta had to take “additional” steps to prevent EU-based users from using a VPN to access the social network.
The official launch comes after The Wall Street Journal’s report last month that indicated that Meta planned to launch Threads in the EU in December. Last week, Threads placed a countdown timer on its home page pointing toward a December 14 launch in the region.
During Meta’s Q3 earnings call, Zuckerberg said that Threads has less than 100 million monthly active users. The social network’s launch in the EU will help the company cross that mark.
On Wednesday, Zuckerberg announced that Threads had started experimenting with ActivityPub integration. This way, the posts originally published on the Meta-owned social network could appear on compatible decentralized networks such as Mastodon.