VOA慢速英语听力：Meta推出Threads与Twitter竞争 Meta Launches Threads to Compete with Twitter

VOA慢速英语听力：Meta推出Threads与Twitter竞争 Meta Launches Threads to Compete with Twitter

People who are unhappy with the way businessman Elon Musk has been running Twitter now have a new social media service to consider.

对于商人埃隆·马斯克一直以来对推特的运营方式感到不满的人们，现在有一个新的社交媒体服务可以考虑。

Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, launched an app called Threads late Wednesday.

拥有Facebook和Instagram的公司Meta于上周三推出了一个名为Threads的应用。

The app is being called a text version of Instagram, a service mainly for sharing photos and videos. Meta said it will be a place for “real-time updates and public conversations.”

该应用被称为Instagram的文本版本，主要用于分享照片和视频。Meta表示，这将成为一个“实时更新和公开对话”的地方。

Some users say it looks similar to Twitter. It is mostly text but permits users to link to their Instagram accounts and to post photos and short videos. Messages can be 500 characters, which is nearly two times longer than Twitter’s 280.

一些用户表示，它看起来很像推特。它主要是文本内容，但允许用户链接到他们的Instagram账户并发布照片和短视频。消息的长度可以达到500个字符，几乎是推特280个字符的两倍长。

People who already have an account with Instagram will be able to import the people they follow into the Threads app. Meta’s leader, Mark Zuckerberg, said 10 million people signed up in the first seven hours.

已经在Instagram上有账户的人将能够将他们关注的人导入Threads应用。Meta的领导人马克·扎克伯格表示，在头七个小时内有1000万人注册。

Meta says it wants Threads to be “more focused on text and dialogue,” than photos and videos.

Meta表示，他们希望Threads比照片和视频更注重“文本和对话”。

The app is available in 100 countries, including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan. The European Union has not approved it yet. People in Britain, India and Lebanon said they had problems seeing some of Zuckerberg’s early messages.

该应用在包括美国、英国、澳大利亚、加拿大和日本在内的100个国家可用。欧盟尚未批准该应用。英国、印度和黎巴嫩的用户表示，他们在查看扎克伯格早期的消息时遇到了问题。

Some of the first users were Gordon Ramsay, a well-known chef and television star from Britain; Shakira, a famous singer from Colombia; and the American actor Jack Black. Businesses also signed up, including Airbnb, Guinness World Records, Netflix and Vogue magazine.

一些首批用户包括英国著名厨师和电视明星戈登·拉姆齐、哥伦比亚著名歌手夏奇拉和美国演员杰克·布莱克。还有包括Airbnb、吉尼斯世界纪录、Netflix和Vogue杂志在内的企业注册了该应用。

Zuckerberg said he wants to make Threads “a friendly place” which he said would be important to its success. Many Twitter users recently said they were unhappy with some of Musk’s changes, including asking for money for verification and the use of the app called Tweetdeck. He also reduced the number of tweets a user can see in one day.

扎克伯格表示，他希望将Threads打造成一个“友好的地方”，他认为这对其成功至关重要。最近，许多推特用户表示对马斯克的一些改变感到不满，包括要求付费进行验证以及使用名为Tweetdeck的应用程序。他还减少了用户每天可见的推文数量。

Musk, the head of the electric car company Tesla and the space exploration company Space-X, purchased Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion.

埃隆·马斯克是电动汽车公司特斯拉和航天公司Space-X的负责人，他于2022年以440亿美元购买了推特。

Some internet experts expressed concern that Meta and Zuckerberg were taking on too much responsibility by launching Threads. The company is already spending money to build its “metaverse” and laid off thousands of people in the past year because of decreasing profits.

一些互联网专家对Meta和扎克伯格通过推出Threads承担了过多责任表示担忧。该公司已经在建设“元宇宙”上投入了大量资金，并在过去一年因盈利下降而裁员数千人。

Others, including Musk and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, said there could be privacy problems with Threads if users permit the app to collect too much information.

其他人，包括马斯克和推特联合创始人杰克·多尔西，表示如果用户允许应用收集过多信息，Threads可能会存在隐私问题。

The app’s privacy statement says it could collect personal data including health, financial, contacts, browsing and search history, as well as other kinds of “sensitive information.”

该应用的隐私声明称，它可能会收集包括健康、财务、联系人、浏览和搜索历史以及其他类型的“敏感信息”在内的个人数据。

I’m Dan Friedell.
我是丹·弗里德尔。