Our New Threads Account Is at https://www.threads.net/@volokhconspiracy [UPDATED: Not Working Any More, Please Follow Us on X or BlueSky]

We used to have our Threads at @volokhc, but we lost access to the underlying Instagram page and therefore the Threads account.

It's possible that the problem was that I listed the name as "Volokh Conspiracy" and then changed it to "Eugene Volokh (Volokh Conspiracy)," and perhaps Instagram insisted that the name be just "Eugene Volokh." But the error messages were never clear; I was told several times that the account had been reinstated, only to have it flagged again; I was asked for photo id's and provided them but was told they couldn't be read; and I wasn't able to change the user name to "Eugene Volokh," if that was the thing I needed to do.

If anyone can help explain how I can recover the @volokhc page, and change the name, if necessary, I'd appreciate that. But fortunately we only had about 20-odd followers there (compared to >600 on Bluesky, in roughly the same length of time), so I hope the change won't trouble too many people. If you are one of our Threads @volokhc followers, please just shift to @volokhconspiracy. (Our Twitter, Mastodon, and Bluesky feeds remain @volokhc.)

Comments

[Dr. Ed 2]

I wouldn't have provided the photo IDs.

Do you have any idea what someone creative and less than honest could do with that information?!?

[John F. Carr]

The Washington Post had a story last spring headlined "Recovering locked Facebook accounts is a nightmare. That’s on purpose." The problem is, any system that is easy to use will be exploited by scammers. (Link here, who knows if you can read it today when the moon is waning crescent: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/hacked-social-media-account-recovery/)

I know somebody who provided photo ID in response to a call about how her cell phone was going to be cancelled due to illegal use. I pointed her at the various identity theft pages. So far, no consequence I heard of.

Google wants to have a phone number to associate with your account. In America a phone number is almost as good as a government-mandated universal ID number. Google can correlate all your activity across multiple platforms, linked by your phone number. I may lose my old gmail address soon if I don't provide a phone number.

[AmosArch]

If the goal is to reach as wide and diverse an audience as possible why only have a presence in the leftwing discount twitter refugee clubhouses and not also the centrist discount twitter refugee clubhouses like Gab and Truth Social?

Are the people who whined and stamped their feet and left because ‘Rocketman bad’ in 2024 so much wiser and worthy of attention than the people who were kicked off the site pre 2022 because they used the wrong pronouns?

Okay maybe these places aren’t as big as twitter. But you’re not exactly playing to a packed crowd in some of the places you are in now.

[Eugene Volokh]

I have a query in to someone to figure out how we can auto-feed from our RSS feed to Truth Social. If you have any information on that yourself, or as to Gab or other places as well, I'd love to hear it. But we do need something that would allow for automatic posting from the RSS feed, rather than having to post each item manually. IFTTT and dlvr.it do that for Twitter, Facebook, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads, but I don't know what would do it for Truth Social, Gab, or other places.

[Eugene Volokh]

By the way, we had an auto-feed to Parler, back in the day (see, e.g., https://reason.com/volokh/2021/02/17/why-im-happy-that-were-on-parler/), because Parler was willing to set it up for us.

[c1597a0]

I use the good old RSS feed viewed using MS Outlook.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/volokh/mainfeed
Works great.

[Eugene Volokh]

Yes, I use that for reading some other blogs -- a very useful feature, see https://reason.com/volokh/2023/01/25/would-you-prefer-to-get-each-of-our-posts-as-an-e-mail/ .

[Estragon]

I’m not sure what exactly I want to say here. As I’ve commented on other threads— this project seems to be well afield from the original concept. On the other hand, it does seem to be working— for you. I wonder if in your darkest moments you might regret mainlining the discourse you have cultivated here into the public realm. Perhaps something to reflect on as we approach the new year?

[Brett Bellmore]

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "the discourse you have cultivated here"? As far as I can see, the only candidates for that discourse are the Conspirators' own writings, which of course they'd want the public to see, or the comments, which are just the public realm reflecting on those writings, and thus unavoidable SOMEWHERE if the Conspirators' own writings are spread about.

[John F. Carr]

This seems to be a standard marketing practice: Blast your messages across all the social media platforms in case a potential reader is not on the first ten platforms you tried.

[Eugene Volokh]

Indeed, especially if we can do it with little extra work, just by setting up a profile on a platform and an automatic RSS feed to that platform. Why not?

[John F. Carr]

I was thinking about how social media platforms that were originally meant for human-to-human interactions have become just another address on the press release distribution list or a place for bots to chat.

I'm not entirely sure the good old days really existed. Online connections like to follow power law distributions, concentrating power in the hands of a few.