The latest sign that Meta's new Twitter doppelganger, Threads, isn't going to capture the spirit of its parent: the company apparently is actively disinterested in nurturing its new app as a useful hub for breaking news and world events.

When asked by Alex Heath of The Verge, Instagram's head, Adam Mosseri-the default hype guy for Threads too-said: "The goal isn't to displace Twitter but to create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less angry place for conversations, but not all of Twitter."

He continued:

"Politics and hard news are important, I don't want to imply otherwise. But my take is, from a platform's perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let's be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.".

There are more than enough amazing communities – sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment, etc – to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news."

Mosseri's take here is weird and rather unsettling for a number of reasons. First, it reminds one of some of the sugarcoated ways Facebook has portrayed itself over the years: just a big, friendly neutral place where people could "connect" — Mark Zuckerberg's favored pitch and one that conjures up visions of a male and female USB cable making love. The company ritualistically incentivized certain forms of content and behavior, driving Facebook users deeper into ideological echo chambers while fanning flames of the polarization and extremism that plagues global politics today-all while proclaiming itself neutral.

As former head of Facebook's News Feed, Mosseri knows all of this, yet seems to be taking away the wrong lessons.

After being bullied by its pathetic defeats during the 2016 presidential election and its subsequent role in hosting the Stop the Steal movement, which ended up in the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, Facebook decided to rebrand and retreat. Mosseri feigns that Meta's want for a social network floating in a vacuum, not influencing the world for better or worse, is in any way feasible-it is weird.

Of course, "politics and hard news" will spill over to Threads; already see anti-LGBTQ hate group Libs of TikTok testing the waters there. Without Meta's investment in or preparation for countervailing forces, extremism and viral misinformation will outcompete whatever legitimate news sources opt to invest resources in the new app.

Meta clearly doesn't care about bolstering journalism these days. The company has long been happy to take what it wants from news orgs while dishing out bait and switch tactics in return, if that. Meta is now blocking access to news in Canada in protest of the new law that requires the tech giant to pay up publishers. (The company is currently worth $745 billion.)

Meta's anti-journalism crusading aside, Mosseri's take on the public square is squarely ahistorical.

Instagram and now Threads are obsessively designed to shuffle normal users together with brands, encouraging commercial activity at every turn. And while the lofty notion of a virtual public square or town hall is evoked often by social media execs to further the agenda of the day, public squares aren't just the domain of trade and commerce. They're also historically, of course, really the beating heart of culture and a place for political discourse in itself, all nasty, messy, unavoidable side effect of being part of society.

Surely Mark Zuckerberg—a self-identified Classics guy who named his children after Roman emperors—would know that the Roman Forum was not merely a bucolic shopping center but was, instead, a place where people could assemble, engage in political life, and hear the news of the day.

Meta's call for a shrunk, commercialized public life crammed to the bursting point with advertising fits neatly with the company's dystopian vision, but it is a disappointing if predictable turn for this exciting Twitter heir to take such little interest in the world itself.