Bad news for keen EU residents eager to take Meta's new Twitter-like Threads app for a spin, as Instagram chief Adam Mosseri says it'll likely be many months before the application launches in the region.

Threads has now become available virtually everywhere except for Europe, following expanding requirements placed by the EU Digital Markets Act that is intended to protect user privacy and ensure control over the data usage process while cutting monopoly-type behavior by tech giants.

The DMA in particular focuses on large corporations that have outsized control over how users access apps and other connective processes. The idea is to stop Google and Apple from abusing their market power in order to facilitate their own products-interests, and incidentally, which Meta is trying to use to establish its own app store within the region-but at the moment, such abuse applies equally to Meta, as Threads is but a spin-off of Instagram.

As such, Meta will need to wait to ensure that Threads ticks off all the boxes, while also ensuring the app meets all the other elements outlined in the updated regulations.

As explained by Mosseri (via his latest Instagram Story):

“Unfortunately, for support in the EU, to make sure that we’re compliant with laws that are coming in 2024 it’s just gonna’ take a while. I wish it weren't - I've been outside the US for a year now, and I think we have to be much less US-centric as a team, and I've been pushing that in a really big way. But it just turns out that in order to make sure that we can verify all the things we need to do to be compliant, it's just going to take many months, unfortunately."

Some EU users had found ways to mitigate the current restrictions, accessing Threads via VPN, but last week Meta put a stop to that, cutting off VPN user access in the region.

And so it goes that EU users are now locked out of the shiny new app, sticking with Twitter at least for the time being.

But even without EU users, Threads is up to 114 million members and still rising, despite reports that engagement in the app has declined sharply from its hyped launch.

Late last week, Sensor Tower reported that daily active users in Threads had dropped approximately 20%, while average time spent shrank by half, as users drifted from the new experience. Part of that is due to the limited current feature set, while it's also using your Instagram graph as a proxy for Threads content recommendations, which may not be the most effective linkage between the two platforms.

Indeed, Mosseri has further noted that Threads has much to go before it gets up to speed, though Threads retention, he says, has been better than expected, as has engagement – though he didn't share any particular data at this stage.
But actually, it's early stages, and you could expect the engagement will continue to shift until it can round out its features. A follow feed, a desktop app, better recommendations – Threads needs all those things to be at the same level as other apps, and until those elements are added, it's hard to make any indicative comparison.

But the fact that so many people are interested, and have enjoyed the Threads experience, is a big first step. Instagram needs to go fast now to maximize that interest, but it starts from a solid foundation – even without EU users at this stage.