In lower than two days, over 30 million customers joined Meta’s new Twitter-like social media app, Threads. But the nascent platform is already going through scrutiny from customers and critics. One of the frequent complaints is that customers can’t delete their Threads account with out additionally deleting their Instagram account.
Whereas that’s definitely one thing curious customers ought to take into accout earlier than becoming a member of Threads, this isn’t as huge an issue as persons are making it out to be, neither is it the most important motive to keep away from Threads within the first place. It’s true that you’ll want to delete your Instagram account if you wish to fully erase your Threads account—at the very least for now. Meta is “trying into” a method to separate Threads and Instagram accounts so customers can absolutely delete one with out shedding the opposite. Till then, nevertheless, customers can deactivate their Threads profile with out shedding their Instagram account.
deactivate your Threads account
Deactivation is sort of a comfortable deletion—it removes your Threads profile and all posts you’ve made, however your information nonetheless technically exists within the background and stays tied to your Instagram account. To different customers, it’s going to look as should you left Threads totally, however your Instagram account will stay energetic and unaffected.
If you happen to ever resolve to reactivate your Threads profile, all that info can be reinstated. You’ll be able to deactivate your threads account within the app beneath Settings > Account > Deactivate Profile > Deactivate Threads Profile.
So if deactivation successfully removes you from Threads, what’s all of the fuss about? The problem comes right down to Meta’s privateness coverage.
Meta’s privateness coverage sucks
As I identified in my Threads overview earlier this week, the opposite main criticism in opposition to Threads is its privateness coverage—particularly the best way it tracks and shops person information, which is much extra aggressive in comparison with opponents like Bluesky and even Twitter.
To be truthful, Threads is open about what varieties of information it collects, and you’ll restrict some monitoring in your iOS or Android settings. That mentioned, the one method to fully stop Threads from amassing and storing your information is to completely delete your account, which at this level requires you to delete your Instagram account as effectively. Even should you deactivate your Threads profile and delete the app, Meta will nonetheless maintain onto any information it collected from you.
Whereas which may sound unfair, the actual fact is Meta tracks Instagram and Fb customers simply as a lot as Threads customers. In different phrases, deleting your Threads account over information issues however protecting Instagram is lacking the purpose—all of Meta’s apps monitor you, so those that need completely nothing to do with Meta’s information amassing ought to keep away from Threads, Instagram, and Fb totally. In any other case, should you’re comfy sufficient to be on one, you would possibly as effectively be comfy sufficient being on all of them.
