The Digital Night Market: Why Threads Is So Popular in Taiwan

Why is the social media platform Threads so popular in Taiwan? According to industry analytics data, Taiwanese users contribute over 21 percent of global traffic to Meta’s Threads platform, despite having a population of only 23 million people. This places Taiwan among the top two sources of global traffic, often second only to the United States, which has more than ten times Taiwan’s population. On a per capita basis, no other country demonstrates a comparable intensity of use.

One of the reasons might be that traditional Taiwanese news has become exhausting. It is highly polarized, saturated with sensational content such as dashcam footage presented as breaking news, and constantly targeted by foreign disinformation. Opening a news app often means being pulled into arguments about China, political blame, or contested facts. Trust in the media is low, and many users feel trapped between constant crisis framing and partisan conflict. Social platforms such as Facebook, PTT, and Twitter have become extensions of this environment, functioning as permanent political battlegrounds rather than spaces for daily life.

Foreign influence operations and political spam further intensify this fatigue. Taiwan exists under continuous pressure from disinformation campaigns, domestic polarization, and long-term security threats. On many platforms, political messaging is unavoidable, even for users who want distance from it. Over time, avoidance becomes the dominant response. Users withdraw, lurk, or leave altogether. Threads entered this environment not as a political platform, but as an accidental refuge.

Day-to-day life plays a central role in explaining why Threads resonated so strongly. An ordinary person’s story often draws more attention in Taiwan than major political or global events. The Threads algorithm prioritizes posts from strangers rather than only from known contacts, producing interactions that are situational rather than reputational. Opening the app feels less like entering a social stage and more like stepping into a neighborhood. Users encounter posts about bad dates, rude customers, annoying coworkers, or simple daily frustrations. These interactions feel alive but demand nothing in return. There is no expectation of reputation management, long-term memory, or social obligation.

This design stands in contrast to other platforms. On Facebook, users experience severe context collapse. Their audience includes supervisors, relatives, former classmates, and professional contacts at the same time. The psychological cost of being constantly observed is high. Many users respond by maintaining multiple accounts or withdrawing from active posting. Threads resolves this problem through soft anonymity. Although accounts are often linked to Instagram, the text-based format removes visual status competition and reduces social surveillance. Users can speak more freely without feeling watched by their entire social network. This does not produce isolation. Instead, it produces honesty.

These features align especially well with the social condition of post-COVID Gen Z. After years of pandemic isolation, online schooling, and constant screen exposure, social interaction itself has become tiring. Platforms such as Instagram require high energy. Users must curate images, manage aesthetics, and present an interesting life. Facebook is exhausting in a different way, combining family surveillance with political conflict. Threads functions as low-battery social media. Users can participate with minimal effort, sometimes posting nothing more than “I am tired” or “today was bad.”

Beyond everyday interaction, Threads has also taken on functional roles that traditional media and platforms failed to fulfill. This became clear during Typhoon Danas (丹娜絲) in July 2025. While official news channels repeatedly aired the same flooding footage, Threads users created a decentralized, real-time disaster map. People posted specific updates such as water levels in their neighborhood, blocked roads, or power outages. Others asked for help checking on elderly relatives or nearby buildings. In these moments, Threads functioned as a civil defense tool, moving faster than institutional channels and prioritizing direct human experience over narrative framing.

A similar logic appears in everyday coordination. A village-like community has emerged in Taiwan on Threads, most visibly through lost-and-found posts. Users routinely share information about lost wallets, phones, or identification cards. Due to Taiwan’s geographic density and the platform’s hyper-local circulation, these posts often reach nearby users within minutes. Replies frequently include photos of recovered items and instructions about where they were delivered. This reflects distributed social monitoring in a high-trust society, where digital distance is extremely short and online strangers are often physically close enough to help.

The same village logic appears in interactions with foreigners. Tourists asking for help reading menus or navigating public transportation often receive not only translations but also detailed recommendations. In mid-2024, a meme known as “Hello, I eat a little” spread widely on Taiwanese Threads. When foreign visitors posted photos of Taiwanese food, local users jokingly flooded the comments with the phrase, often accompanied by a cartoon image of a cat holding chopsticks. Rather than mockery, this behavior signaled playful inclusion. In a widely shared exchange, a Korean tourist responded with a counter-meme asking users to put their chopsticks away, turning the interaction into a shared joke. This form of aggressive hospitality transforms strangers into participants through humor rather than politeness and is difficult to sustain on more hostile platforms.

This village structure also reshapes interactions across generations. Young users frequently post photos of unfamiliar vegetables bought cheaply at PX Mart, asking how to cook them. Replies often come from older users offering blunt, practical instructions or corrections. These exchanges restore a form of intergenerational knowledge transfer that has largely disappeared from urban life. Threads becomes one of the few spaces where younger users willingly accept advice from older generations, because the interaction is about everyday survival rather than authority or politics.

The same logic reshapes how political figures appear. On Facebook, politicians post formal statements and policies. On Threads, they post like neighbors. Former President Tsai Ing-wen and other public figures adapted quickly to this norm. Instead of institutional messaging, Tsai frequently posts casual updates about her daily life, including photos of her dogs. In one instance, a lighthearted “留友看” (“leave a friend to see”) comment drew over ten thousand likes and comments, going viral overnight. On Threads, she is not performing authority but familiarity. This lowers the emotional temperature of political presence and reinforces the sense that the platform is a shared social space rather than a battleground.

At the same time, Threads in Taiwan has taken on a new role in the post-AI internet. Many users experience the broader online environment as increasingly artificial. Search engines are filled with AI-generated content, social platforms are crowded with bots, and automated replies are difficult to distinguish from real people. Against this backdrop, Taiwanese Threads functions as a human reserve. The platform is informally policed by its users. Posts that feel overly polished, automated, or corporate are ignored or mocked. Typos, bad grammar, and raw emotion are treated as signs of authenticity. What matters is not quality but proof of life.

Threads has become something closer to a digital night market. It is crowded, noisy, and full of strangers brushing past one another. You might see a lost wallet returned, a tourist being helped, or a former president talking about her pet. In an era defined by artificial intelligence and great power politics, Threads offers Taiwan a rare space where everyday human life still feels real.

(Featured photo by DSD on Pexels)