Zuckerberg’s Sneaky Move: Threads, Facebook’s Twitter Clone, Uninstallable Without Sacrificing Instagram

• Meta (formerly Facebook) launches Threads, Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter clone.
• Threads gains 10 million users in just seven hours.
• Users express concern over the app’s account deletion policy requiring the removal of the entire Instagram account.

According to TechCrunch, Meta (formerly known as Facebook) has officially launched Threads, Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter clone. Since its release, the app has gained significant popularity, attracting a staggering 10 million users within just seven hours.

However, users have expressed concern over Threads’ distinctive policy regarding account deletion. The platform requires users to have an Instagram account to sign up, and deleting the app necessitates taking more drastic measures, which has caused confusion and raised questions among the user base.

In a recently released “Supplemental Privacy Policy,” Facebook has clarified that while users can deactivate their Threads profile, permanently deleting it is only possible by deleting their entire Instagram account. The reason behind this linked deletion policy is that a Threads profile is considered an integral part of a user’s Instagram account.

This revelation has caught many users off guard, including Emily Hughes, who expressed her surprise on Twitter, advising others not to sign up for Threads due to the inability to delete the account independently.

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!

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— emily hughes ✨ (@emilyhughes) July 6, 2023

Despite its unconventional deletion policy, Threads has garnered substantial support from prominent brands such as Netflix, Amazon, NFL, and Pepsi, indicating their confidence in the platform.

However, notable names including Google, Apple, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Disney have not yet joined, leaving their absence unexplained.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and co-founder of Facebook, holds high expectations for the new app. In a Threads post, he expressed his belief in the necessity of a public conversations app that can attract over one billion users.

He also remarked that while Twitter had the opportunity to achieve this, they have not succeeded thus far, and he hopes that Threads will fill that void.

Facebook has made a commitment to ensuring that Threads will be “sanely run,” which can be interpreted as a euphemism for implementing stricter censorship measures compared to Twitter.

However, recent developments have highlighted a concerning aspect: the Threads app will extensively collect and utilize users’ personal data, which is not surprising considering it is a product of Facebook, a company known for its data-centric practices.