Meta Launches ‘Threads’: App Won’t Let You Delete Account Unless You Also Delete Instagram

The Threads logo is displayed on a cell phone in San Anselmo, Calif., on July 5, 2023. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Meta’s newly launched Twitter rival, “Threads,” is facing criticism from users due to the app’s restrictions on deleting accounts.

“You may deactivate your Threads profile at any time, but your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account,” says the app’s supplemental privacy policy. To create a Threads account, users have to sign in with their Instagram ID. Users have begun complaining about the restriction. “I deactivated my Threads account already. But it turns out you can’t delete your Threads account without also deleting your Instagram account. So, maybe just don’t sign up!” Emily Hughes, an author and editor, said in a July 6 tweet.

Threads offers users the option to deactivate their accounts. However, deactivation only means that other users on the app won’t see them. All personal information will continue to remain on company servers.

Once a person deletes their Instagram account, their Threads data will remain on the servers for up to 90 days. If a user wishes to delete all their Threads content but wants to continue using Instagram, they will have to go through each piece of Threads content and manually delete them one by one.

Lilly Dancyger, a book editor at the magazine “Barrel House,” said in a tweet that she opened a Threads account “just to look and immediately hated it. But I guess I’m stuck with it now.” P. Nielsen Hayden, editor-in-chief at Tor Books, said that he is “never gonna create a Threads account.”

Meanwhile, some users see Threads as a positive development and a worthy challenge for Twitter. “I think Threads will outperform most people’s expectations,” Roberto Nickson, an entrepreneur and content creator, said in a July 4 tweet.

“There is strong pent-up demand for a Twitter alternative. Bluesky, Mastodon, and others have recently enjoyed record growth. But unlike the others, Threads is starting from an already existing user-base. Which happens to be the largest in the world,” he pointed out.

“Meta drives an incredible amount of commerce. Threads makes it even easier to do so for brands and creators on Instagram. It will also integrate seamlessly across Meta’s family of apps.”

Privacy and Censorship Worries

Threads has come under scrutiny for the amount of personal information the app collects from its users. In a July 4 tweet, Theo Priestley, a futurist and author, called Meta’s Twitter rival “an absolute privacy nightmare.”

“Not only do they know more about you than arguably you do yourself from your posts on Facebook, they are harvesting pretty much everything they can and tying it back to your identity for even more granular profiling,” he said.

According to a screenshot of the app posted by Mr. Priestley, Threads collects personal info like browsing history, search history, sensitive info, contacts, location, financial info, purchases, health and fitness, and identifiers among others.

“Add that to what they‘ll collect from current and future Quest headsets in terms of biometrics, and the ability to ’clone' an entire digital version of yourself isn’t too hard to imagine. Of course, this is just training data for Zuck’s plans to make their own AI personal assistants and his idea of generative advertising too,” Mr. Priestley said, referring to Mark Zuckerberg.

Meta’s Threads will not be rolled out in the European Union due to the region’s strict data privacy rules. The company has informed Ireland’s Data Privacy Commission about the decision.

There are also reports of censorship on Threads. In a July 6 tweet, Derek Utley, entrepreneur and private investor, said that he has been informed by multiple users that his account was being censored on the platform.

In a screenshot posted together with the tweet, a Threads user wanting to follow Mr. Utley is shown a message asking whether they are sure about wanting to follow the entrepreneur. Mr. Utley’s account “has repeatedly posted false information that was reviewed by independent fact-checkers,” the message stated.

Threads Versus Twitter

Threads officially launched on Wednesday, with Mr. Zuckerberg claiming that the app had received 10 million sign-ups in seven hours.

The launch came amid Twitter limiting the number of posts users can see per day. Similar to Twitter, Threads is a microblogging app that allows users to make posts that are up to 500 characters long as well as post five-minute long videos.

When asked on Threads by a user whether the app will become bigger than Twitter, Mr. Zuckerberg replied that “it'll take some time.” According to SEO website Backlinko, Twitter had over 396 million users as of March.

“I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this, but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will,” Mr. Zuckerberg added.

In a July 6 tweet, Twitter owner Elon Musk retweeted a screenshot of an email he sent in 2018 in which the industrialist said that he had deleted his Instagram account, calling it “weak sauce.”

“It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram,” Mr. Musk said in the tweet.

Mr. Musk also posted laughing emojis at several tweets that criticized Threads, including one which suggested that Meta’s new app was a copy-paste job.

The launch of Threads has happened while many people are leaving Twitter after the Musk takeover and actively looking for alternatives.

In his July 4 tweet, Roberto Nickson pointed out that the timing of the Threads launch “couldn’t be better.” He noted that “launching in the midst of a chaotic weekend of rate-limits and outages on Twitter will give them a strong push.”