Meta is building a new app to compete with Twitter, seeking to capitalize on discontent with Elon Musk’s policies by leveraging the massive base of user accounts on Meta’s Instagram platform, according to reporting from The Verge.
Meta product boss Chris Cox showed a preview of the app, known internally as “Project 92,” to employees during an all-hands meeting on Thursday, describing it as the company’s “response to Twitter,” according to the report.
The new app will use Instagram’s account systems to merge preexisting user information onto the platform, and will be integrated with ActivityPub, a decentralized social media protocol that connects users’ social media platforms and accounts into one manageable system.
“We’ve been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run, that they believe that they can trust and rely upon distribution,” Cox told employees, according to The Verge. Meta already has celebrities, like DJ Slime, interested in the app, Cox said, and is in discussion with Oprah and the Dalai Lama.
The new Instagram-based platform is seeking to be a safer, easier-to-use alternative to Twitter, Cox noted, alluding to the turmoil that has engulfed the San Francisco–based social networking service since it was acquired by Musk for $44 billion in November. Musk has loosened content moderation rules and reinstated banned users, and hate speech has increased on the platform, according to numerous reports.
Facebook parent Meta and its Instagram business have been widely criticized for their content moderation practices as well. Earlier this week, a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed a “vast network of pedophiles” operating on Instagram.
By basing its new app on the ActivityPub protocol, Meta is taking a page from some of the other decentralized social platforms that have emerged as Twitter rivals recently. Mastodon, an ActivityPub-based platform, is an already existing Twitter alternative that saw its user base double in size after Elon Musk took over Twitter in 2022. And Bluesky, which is backed by Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, has attracted numerous high-profile users since its launch earlier this year.
Decentralized social networking protocols enable users to easily move between platforms, without losing the network of friends and contacts they amassed on a particular platform. Meta, parent of Facebook and Instagram, has long operated as a closed “walled garden,” in which users’ content and contacts are effectively locked in to the platform.
Meta began working on the Project 92 app in January, Cox said during the meeting, according to The Verge. The app could be called “Threads” when it launches, which Cox told employees would happen “as soon as we can.”
Meta did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
