Forbidden Apps in Europe: Lemon8, Threads

While the rest of the world enjoys the most recent trendy apps like Threads and Lemon8, European citizens still have to wait for the European authorities and watchdogs to offer the green light. When trying to download these apps in Europe, a message tells you the apps are unavailable on any of your devices.

Threads is “the Twitter of Instagram” or “the Twitter of Meta” as it is called. Launched by Meta, Mark Zuckerberg’s company, Threads copies Twitter, as Meta had been trying to copy Twitter’s features for a long time. By hiring former Twitter employees, Meta has finally hit the jackpot.

Threads has become the fastest-growing app worldwide. It took only one hour to be downloaded by 1 million users, much faster than ChatGPT. This means Threads has the potential to become a very successful app used by hundreds of millions worldwide.

It’s not only that, but such an app, exactly like TikTok, has the potential to be one of the most efficient showcases for any company out there. As experts explain, companies, not only individuals, should be between the very early adopters of such apps.

When registering very early with social media platforms such as TikTok or Threads, chances are your company takes advantage of the period when accounts are pushed organically to users. Later on, this ability fades out, and the accounts are required promotion to reach the necessary number of users.

So, from our perspective as digital marketers, the sooner we register on platforms like Threads or Lemon8, the higher the chances to offer our clients the necessary feedback and expertise to push them in front of their potential clients. We lose these opportunities in Europe, and it is challenging for most international agencies to cut off from their offer social media platforms like Lemon8 or Threads. It is a big minus when it comes to American clients.

Catalin ADAM, digital strategist at TUYA Digital

Off the record, reputable agencies have created American accounts using VPNs. They simply cannot risk losing the American clients that ask for social media marketing. But this is not the proper way to operate social media accounts on the recent platforms.

Why does the European Union block Threads and Lemon8?

Threads is blocked because the app allows users to register with an Instagram account, and such cross-platform features are not allowed in the European space. Also, there are some concerns with the data Threads collects, as it collects all types of personal data protected in the EU, from sexual preferences to religious beliefs or location and even environment recording.

Meta has quite a history with the European authorities and lawmakers who are unhappy with how Meta operates and sends data to the American servers.

Regarding Lemon8, the situation is simple: Lemon8 was developed and operated by Bytedance, the same company operating TikTok. And with this app being on a blacklist in more and more European states, Lemon8 has a low chance of being available to the European public soon.

Despite having some of the best mobile app developers in the world, Europe seems not the place to create and launch an app and be successful worldwide. Strange enough, China is more like a place to succeed from this perspective than European Union, and this is another reason why the European IT sector is way below the American or even the Chinese one.

Europeans live either in the very distant past, where smartphones and smartphone apps still didn’t exist or in the very far future, where governments will probably censor and control any app before its appearance. Either way, some think it’s way better in the US, where people are still free to decide for their own good and also are free to accept or not an app by knowing it knows everything about you while using it.