Deleting Topics Is the Least of Your Meta-Confidential Concerns

In less than two days, more than 30 million users have joined the Twitter-like Meta’s new social media app, Threads . But the nascent platform is already under scrutiny from users and critics. One of the most common complaints is that users cannot delete their Threads account without also deleting their Instagram account.

While this is certainly something curious users should keep in mind before joining streams, it’s not as big of an issue as people make it out to be, and it’s not the biggest reason to avoid streams altogether. It’s true that you will need to delete your Instagram account if you want to completely wipe your Threads account – at least for now. Meta is looking for a way to separate Threads and Instagram accounts so that users can completely delete one without losing the other. However, until then, users can deactivate their Threads profile without losing their Instagram account.

How to deactivate your Threads account

Deactivation is similar to soft deletion – it deletes your Threads profile and all your posts, but your data technically stays in the background and remains tied to your Instagram account. To other users, it will look like you’ve left Threads entirely, but your Instagram account will remain active and unaffected.

If you ever decide to reactivate your Threads profile, all of this information will be restored. You can deactivate your Streams account in the app under Settings > Account > Deactivate Profile > Deactivate Streams Profile.

So, if deactivation effectively removes you from streams, what’s all the fuss about? The problem comes down to Meta’s privacy policy.

Privacy policy Meta sucks

As I noted in my Threads review earlier this week, another major criticism of Threads is its privacy policy, especially how it tracks and stores user data, which is much more aggressive compared to competitors like Bluesky or even Twitter.

To be fair, Threads is open about what types of data it collects, and you can choose to restrict tracking in your iOS or Android settings. However, the only way to completely stop Threads from collecting and storing your data is to completely delete your account, which at this stage requires you to delete your Instagram account as well . Even if you deactivate your Threads profile and uninstall the app, Meta will still store any data collected from you .

While this may seem unfair, the fact is that Meta tracks Instagram and Facebook users in the same way that it tracks Threads users. In other words, deleting your Threads account due to data issues but keeping Instagram overlooked – all Meta apps track you, so those who absolutely want nothing to do with Meta data collection should avoid Threads, Instagram and Facebook. Otherwise, if you’re comfortable enough with one, you might be comfortable enough with all the others.