How did Facebook (aka Meta) aquire the name/domain "threads"?

Money.

The same way they got "meta": money.

Considering it was registered in 1995 (https://www.whois.com/whois/threads.com) you are correct in thinking that it should have already been registered.

However you can sell (transfer) a domain to others if you wish, which is probably what meta did.

You just know someone bought that domain hoping to turn it into a gangbusters online clothes retailer and the best they could manage to do is camp on it and sell it.

Could’ve been Bezos, instead was a bozo.
- Were they a bozo, though? If they sold that domain to FB, there is a great chance they just banked like gangbusters.
If you're interested, you can see the past snapshots of thread.net in the wayback machine. This one from 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20160111175229/http://thread.net/

Old primary word domains like this can cost millions to acquire.
Isn't this something else though? Meta's is .net isn't it? So even they couldn't get the .com...

edit: Indeed it's nothing to do with Meta, though it seems kinda related. Bit surprised Meta went with the name actually.
- ah ye are right, I briefly checked out .com and it seemed to roughly match
  
  .net was registered in 1997 so the same roughly still applies

Yeah, and if they could stop using established terms for their BS like "Metaverse" that would be great.

How does Microsoft justify having apps called "Teams" and "Code"?

Meta is a stupid name. So is threads.

At least they're willing to use their buttload of money acquire the domain, unlike Nissan and what they did to nissan.com owner.

Could you elaborate, please?
- Nissan Motors v. Nissan Computer
  
  In 1980, Uzi Nissan founded Nissan Foreign Car, an automobile service, in Raleigh, North Carolina.[9][10] In 1987, Uzi Nissan founded Nissan International, Ltd, an import/export company that traded primarily in heavy equipment and computers.[11] On 14 May 1991, Uzi Nissan founded Nissan Computer Corporation, which provides sales and service of personal computers, servers, and computer parts, as well as internet hosting and development. Nissan Computer registered nissan.com for its use on 4 June 1994, five years prior to Nissan Motor Corporation's interest in the domain.[10][2]
  
  Nissan Motors considered Nissan Computer's use of the name to be trademark dilution, and laid claim to the domain by alleging cyber squatting. However, Nissan Computer was named after its owner, Uzi Nissan.[13][14][15] Following the outcome of the case, Nissan Motors uses the name nissanusa.com for its U.S. website.
  
  Uzi Nissan died in 2020 due to covid and the website is now no more, but it used to contains his account abut Nissan suing him for the domain and he spent years and about a million dollar to defend himself. He won and Nissan was ordered to pay $50,000 for his trouble, so he was furious. More details can be found in the internet archive snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/20190608101443/https://www.digest.com/Big_Story.php

It seems that before Instagram's Threads was launched, threads.net was just a domain name parked for sale with GoDaddy's domain auction service Afternic: https://web.archive.org/web/20221115220239/http://threads.net/

So I guess Meta just paid whatever they were asking to be paid?

I don't understand something else - why every article say that threads us a Twitter rival if meta themselves say it's a slack competitor and it's an exact copy of slack

Edit: oh OK that's what op was talking about. Turns out there's already an app called thread which is slack copycat and was created before meta's threads lmao what a shitshow

They just have the .net though.

Yeah, and if they could stop using established terms for their BS like "Metaverse" that would be great.