Users who are trying to delete their account on Meta's new app Threads are finding out that they can't do so unless they also delete their Instagram account.
Threads — Meta's highly anticipated rival to Twitter — launched on July 6 and received 10 million sign-ups in its first seven hours, according to a post from Mark Zuckerberg on the app.
Buzz around the new platform has been amplified by recent disruptions to the Twitter user experience after Elon Musk announced the temporary introduction of "rate limits," which put a cap on the number of posts users could read, citing "extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation" from AI companies as the reason for the measures.
—Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) July 3, 2023
The arrival of Threads has so far been the internet's big and fun experiment of the day — users are posting on the app to find out how it works, and many have said they think people will begin to leave Twitter in favor of its shiny new competitor.
But some others have said that after a few hours of experimentation on the app, they decided they wanted to abandon their accounts, only to find that they cannot delete Threads without also deleting their account on Instagram, according to the Threads Supplemental Privacy Policy and a Help Centre page.
—Mikki ♮ (@mikki_lr) July 6, 2023
Threads requires users to have an Instagram account prior to signing up. Upon downloading and opening the app, Threads provides an option to import bio information and followers from a user's existing Instagram profile.
A disclaimer in the app's Help Centre says that users can delete individual posts or temporarily deactivate their account, meaning their posts will not be visible to other users until they choose to reactivate the account. In order to permanently delete their account's profile and data, however, they will need to delete their Instagram account.
A Supplemental Privacy Policy for the app also states that "Your Threads profile is part of your Instagram account, and may be deleted at any time by deleting your Instagram account."
A spokesperson for Meta confirmed this to Insider in an email statement, adding that "this is something we're working on." The statement also clarified that users can deactivate their profile at any time without it affecting their Instagram account.
Some users who attempted to delete their accounts on Threads took to its rival, Twitter, to air their complaints about Meta's policy.
—laura 🦠 (@ecto_fun) July 6, 2023
"We can't delete our threads account without deleting our ig?? they knew ppl would instantly hate it so they made it a saw trap," one user wrote in a tweet that has received 1.1 million views and 25,000 likes.
A number of other users have described feeling "stuck" or "trapped" in their Threads accounts, and one user who said she opted to deactivate her account instead of deleting it urged others not to sign up for the app at all.
For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.
