People care. You just refuse to listen to what they say.

They say things like "my internet cap is reached", "my battery is drained faster", "my phone is slow" and a million other things that oblivious and clueless programmers don't hear because they can only hear when someone talks about megabytes, cpu cycles, RAM etc.

> my internet cap is reached

1. The vast majority of the world now has access to very high or unlimited data packs. This is hardly the big issue that HackerNews makes it out to be.

2. Threads' main user base is Instagram. An hour of watching Instagram Reels is more data than the entire Threads app. I highly doubt Instagram users are data strapped.

> "my battery is drained faster"

App size has nothing to do with how much battery is drained out. If you're saying Threads is not optimized, I disagree. And again, considering the main targeted user base is Instagram and Twitter, Threads is going to be significantly better than either app in terms of battery life (little to no video options right now)

> "my phone is slow"

Same as above, basically.

> 1. The vast majority of the world now has access to very high or unlimited data packs. This is hardly the big issue that HackerNews makes it out to be.

Source? This seems like a really first-world country thing to say.

Ironically, IME there tend to be fewer data restrictions in developing countries than developed ones.

We really do have expensive internet in the US. Sim cards when traveling are so cheap. I think I have a 4gb plan with Verizon and it's expensive enough for me.

Even in some of the richest countries in the world, plenty of us are on metered phone contracts. OP acting like there isn't a cost of living crisis.

Jesus christ, we're talking about a 200MB app with text-based communication. The cost of living crisis is real but to pretend that people need to limit their internet usage to save money is ridiculous.

I live in Canada which has some of the worst data plans, and even on the 5GB plans I wouldn't bat an eye on using an app like Threads.

> This seems like a really first-world country thing to say.

First world countries tend to have lower data caps and higher cost per GB on average: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cost-of-mobile-data-worldwi...

> 2. Threads' main user base is Instagram.

Those users already have Instagram. Threads is competing against Twitter clones.

> App size has nothing to do with how much battery is drained out.

Larger apps use more radio, use more CPU for decompression, use more flash writes on updates. All use battery. Decompression and writes for background updates slow the phone. The additional flash writes lead to wear causing storage to become slower even when the app is not being used or updated.

It's really hard to hear what they say over the sound of 70M+ downloads. Actions speak a lot louder than words.

"The customer is always right in matters of taste."

> 70M+ downloads

Downloads are one thing. People are curious. Will they keep it?

72MB isn't stopping people downloading it. If they later decide to delete, it will be because the UX is bad, or lack of content, or something like that. Nobody says "I use this every day but I need 72MB, delete" and nobody says "this app sucks but it's only 10MB, might as well keep it".

They may make a “Lite” version of the app like they did for Facebook or WhatsApp, but Twitter’s user base is much less developing world heavy, so I doubt it. This was clearly a skunkworks project, once it is established, it will get more resources including optimization specialists. Then again, Twitter, being the abode of bro-grammers, never got it and Musk had a point when he fired most of the team.

Precisely. I had a friend who downloaded an app, but it was 2kb over the limit that he prefers to have all his apps! He promptly deleted it and left a scathing review. Naturally this picked up and a few other users refused to download the app.

Really doubt the target users are gonna blame on this

Some fraction of the 1 billion+ who didn't download the app care, including me.